This Week’s Independent Thinkers

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One thousand plants are grown worldwide for food, beverages, spices and medicine. Seventy-five percent of flowering plants rely on hummingbirds, bees, butterflies and other animal species to pollinate, or move pollen grains between two flowers of the same species, allowing the plants to reproduce.

France’s National Assembly approved a bill banning neonicotinoid pesticides, big words meaning chemical sprays, suspected of killing honeybees.

Naturally, pesticide producers point out that studies are inconclusive and alarming for farmers wanting to “protect” their crops from nature. Critics of the bill, including Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, insist this legislative action could reduce harvests 15-40 percent.

One of every three mouthfuls of food we eat is there because of pollinators. So how do chemical companies anticipate feeding the world when pollinators are too dead to pollinate?

Ever eaten money?

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