Bayer Crop Science plants pollinator seed mix around MN seed coating equipment factory

Talk about unbelievable corporate citizenship. On page 3 of the Agri-Growth Council's June Newsletter, in the article, Spotlight: Bayer SeedGrowth, we read this gem:

Bayer supports environmentally compatible practices company-wide, including recycling and green landscaping practices in all locations. As part of the SeedGrowth Equipment Innovation Center construction, planners worked with county conservationists to develop a native seed mix to plant in the no-mow areas that make up 85 percent of the outdoor area, and contractors installed drip irrigation in place of standard lawn sprinklers to save water. In addition, Bayer planted a pollinator seed mix around the facility to assist local beekeepers whose bees forage throughout the Shakopee area.

It's important for pollinators to have adequate forage. It's part of the matrix for bee health that University of Minnesota scientist Marla Spivak outlined in her MDA Pollinators Summit Presentation.

Yes, dear readers: while inside the SeedGrowth Equipment Innovation Center in Shakopee, Minnesota, Bayer toils to manufacture seed coating equipment with which to better coating seed with neonicotinoids and other insecticides, outside, bees and other pollinators will be supping on great pollinator forage.

In January, Tom Philpott report in a Mother Jones' article about imidacloprid, a Bayer neonic, The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late:

The crops most likely to expose honeybees to harmful levels of imidacloprid are cotton and citrus, while "corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level."

Minnesota native satirist Max Shulman, especially in his Anybody Got A Match? phase, couldn't have come up with anything better than this.

Screengrabs: slides from Marla Spivak's MDA Pollinators Summit Presentation. Spivak and her associates have discovered a matrix of factors that contribute to pollinator health. Look at the slideshow for more information.

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