'Like sending bees to war': the deadly truth behind your almond-milk obsession

Bees are essential to the functioning of America’s titanic almond industry – and billions are dying in the process

Dennis Arp was feeling optimistic last summer, which is unusual for a beekeeper these days.

Thanks to a record wet spring, his hundreds of hives, scattered across the central Arizona desert, produced a bounty of honey. Arp would have plenty to sell in stores, but more importantly, the bumper harvest would strengthen his bees for their biggest task of the coming year.

Dennis Arp stands for a portrait near a colony of honeybees outside Rye, Arizona. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/The Guardian

Like most commercial beekeepers in the US, at least half of Arp’s revenue now comes from pollinating almonds. Selling honey is far less lucrative then renting out his colonies to mega-farms in California’s fertile Central Valley, home to 80% of the world’s almond supply.

But as winter approached, with Arp just months away from taking his hives to California, his bees started getting sick. By October, 150 of Arp’s hives had been wiped out by mites, 12% of his inventory in just a few months. “My yard is currently filled with stacks of empty bee boxes that used to contain healthy hives,” he says.

This shouldn’t be happening to someone like Arp, a beekeeper with decades of experience. But his story is not unique. Commercial beekeepers who send their hives to the almond farms are seeing their bees die in record numbers, and nothing they do seems to stop the decline.

A recent survey of commercial beekeepers showed that 50 billion bees – more than seven times the world’s human population – were wiped out in a few months during winter 2018-19. This is more than one-third of commercial US bee colonies, the highest number since the annual survey started in the mid-2000s.

Adam Arp, Dennis’s son, works outside Rye on 8 May 2019. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/The Guardian

Beekeepers attributed the high mortality rate to pesticide exposure, diseases from parasites and habitat loss. However, environmentalists and organic beekeepers maintain that the real culprit is something more systemic: 

America’s reliance on industrial agriculture methods, especially those used by the almond industry, which demands a large-scale mechanization of one of nature’s most delicate natural processes.

Honeybees thrive in a biodiverse landscape. But California’s almond industry places them in a monoculture where growers expect the bees to be predictably productive year after year.

Commercial honeybees are considered livestock by the US Department of Agriculture because of the creature’s vital role in food production. But no other class of livestock comes close to the scorched-earth circumstances that commercial honey bees face. More bees die every year in the US than all other fish and animals raised for slaughter combined.

Beehives stand stacked along a blooming almond orchard near Shafter, California. The bees pollinate many crops, including almond trees in February, and are essential to the food chain. Photograph: Ann Johansson/Corbis via Getty Images

“The high mortality rate creates a sad business model for beekeepers,” says Nate Donley, a senior scientist for the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s like sending the bees to war. Many don’t come back.”

Nuts for almonds

California’s $11bn almond industry has grown at an extraordinary rate. In 2000, almond orchards occupied 500,000 acres. By 2018 that had more than doubled – almond groves in the Central Valley now blanket an area the size of Delaware, producing 2.3bn lb of almonds annually sold around the world.

The average American eats 2lb of almonds every year, more than in any other country. US almond milk sales have grown 250% over the past five years to reach $1.2bn, over four times that of any other plant-based milk, according to a 2018 Nielsen report.

Top: Dennis Arp works his hives outside Rye. 

Bottom: A colony of honeybees hard at work for Mountain Top Honey Company outside Rye.

“We don’t see a cap on growth at this point, especially with the incredible versatility of almonds in foods,” says Richard Waycott, president and CEO of the Almond Board of California, a not-for-profit advocacy organization representing the majority of farmers.

But these enormous orchards can’t function without bees.

It wasn’t that long ago that beekeeping was mostly a boutique pursuit of the gentleman apiarist. When European immigrants introduced their own version of agriculture to North America, they also imported the art of beekeeping, along with boxes of Apis mellifera, the domesticated European honeybee.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, beekeepers earned a modest living selling beeswax and honey. But in the late 20th century there was a titanic shift, exemplified by the career of Dennis Arp.

Arp, 67, got into beekeeping nearly four decades ago when he established his Mountain Top Honey company in Flagstaff, Arizona. A commanding presence with biceps toned from hoisting heavy bee boxes, Arp is the sort of diligent beekeeper who spends his days driving between apiary sites, and his nights studying online forums, reading articles on the latest mite treatment.

An almond tree blooms near Visalia, in California. Photograph: Ann Johansson/Corbis via Getty Images

When cheap imported honey began cutting into Arp’s profits in the 1980s, he decided to send some of his hives with a beekeeper friend to pollinate almonds in California. A decade later he struck up a deal of his own with an almond grower in California’s Kern county. With that strategic move, Arp joined the growing ranks of migratory beekeepers in the US who still sell honey but mostly travel the country from one pollination site to the next with stacks of bee boxes in tow.

In the early 1980s, when Arp was just selling honey, he would lose about 5% of his hives per year to disease or weather conditions. Around 2000, Arp’s bees started dying in greater numbers.

First, he experienced a nearly 100% loss of his hives from an infestation of tracheal mites. Then he had to cope with the intrusion of Africanized “killer” bees. And finally, what he still considers the bane of his business, a parasitic mite called Varroa destructor, literally sucked the life out of his bees. The mite feeds on the bee’s plump body, destroying the insect’s immune system and other vital functions. If Arp doesn’t apply regular chemical treatments for the mites, his colonies will die.

Arp and his son Adam. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/The Guardian

Now Arp finds himself in a vicious circle: he is constantly battling to keep enough bees alive to meet the requirements of his almond contract. But if he was not pollinating almonds, maybe his bees would be healthier.

This year Arp’s bees, like more than two-thirds of the United States’ commercial honey bee population, will spend February in the toxic chemical soup of California’s Central Valley, fertilizing almonds one blossom at a time.

Pesticides are used for all kinds of crops across the state, but the almond, at 35m lb a year, is doused with greater absolute quantities than any other. One of the most widely applied pesticides is the herbicide glyphosate (aka Roundup), which is a staple of large-scale almond growers and has been shown to be lethal to bees as well as cause cancer in humans.

On top of the threat of pesticides, almond pollination is uniquely demanding for bees because colonies are aroused from winter dormancy about one to two months earlier than is natural. The sheer quantity of hives required far exceeds that of other crops – apples, America’s second-largest pollination crop, use only one-tenth the number of bees. And the bees are concentrated in one geographic region at the same time, exponentially increasing the risk of spreading sickness.

Top: Dennis Arp replaces queen bees in hives that rejected or were missing them outside Rye. Arp drove to California to purchase the new queens. 

Bottom: Honeybees working for Mountain Top Honey Company.

“Bees are exposed to all kinds of diseases in California,” says Arp. “There can be hundreds of thousands of hives from multiple beekeepers in one staging area. It is like letting your bees go into a singles bar and then they have unprotected sex.”

The almond business has been good to Arp – last February, for instance, he installed 1,500 of his hives in one grower’s orchard at $200 per hive – so he is reluctant to make a direct connection between the constant health challenges with his bees and the time spent every spring in the almond groves. “The bees like working on the almonds,” says Arp. “But it obviously exposes them to risks.”

Now he routinely loses 30% or more of his bees a year, mirroring national statistics. In any other industry, the death of a third of your workforce would cause an international outcry – but this staggering loss is now considered the normal cost of doing business.

“The bees in the almond groves are being exploited and disrespected,” says Patrick Pynes, an organic beekeeper who teaches environmental studies at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. “They are in severe decline because our human relationship to them has become so destructive.”

The high price of growth

When the phenomenon called colony collapse disorder was first identified in 2006, after a record number of honeybees mysteriously disappeared or died outside their hives, it was linked to a variety of factors including loss of habitat and climate change. But the primary culprit was pesticides. Researchers found that a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids was especially lethal to bees.

A smoker deters bees while Adam and Dennis Arp work on the hives. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/The Guardian

Last May, the EPA pulled a dozen “neonics” from the market following a successful lawsuit brought by beekeepers and environmental groups. 

But there are many chemicals that are not labeled as bee toxic, even though they can make bees sick and weaken their immune systems. While bees may survive the pollination season, they may not last the winter or may take back substances that gradually poison the entire colony.

Those on the almond growers’ side acknowledge there is a huge problem. “The bee mortality rate is too high and is unacceptable,” says the entomologist Bob Curtis, a pollination consultant for the Almond Board of California. “It is only because of the hard work and creativity of beekeepers that [almond growers] have gotten the bees they need.”

The almond board’s “best practice” guidelines encourage beekeepers to spend as little time in California’s Central Valley as possible. Honeybees can travel up to three miles in search of varied forage, so even if the almond grower is doing everything right to protect a pollination investment, the cotton or grape farmer down the road may be spraying bee-toxic chemicals on crops.

Even as almond production has steadily ramped up for decades, the number of commercial hives in the US has remained at a steady 2.7m colonies since the early 2000s. With all the challenges beekeepers face, just maintaining the bare minimum is a struggle.

One coping strategy pursued by the almond industry has been to develop genetically modified almond varieties that require only one hive per acre to pollinate, instead of two. And last January, a pollinator protection law went into effect in California as part of the state’s “Bee Where” initiative. For this program, beekeepers are required to register the location of their hives with the county’s agricultural commissioner and farmers must notify the commissioner in advance of any plans to spray pesticides.

Even so, the costs beekeepers incur trying to keep their bees alive are constantly rising. Arp has spent approximately $50,000 in the past year buying new hives to compensate for the 35% colony loss he experienced last year. He also spends at least $50,000 a year on mite treatments, not to mention other more aggressive measures the industry is taking just to maintain the status quo. These include splitting robust hives in half, introducing mail-order queens to new hives and fattening bees on corn syrup or on simulated pollen substances called “pollen patties”.

Experts say that simply working around the pesticide problem isn’t enough and that farming itself must be changed from the ground up.

The search for a solution

Hope is being found in a new certification program that, similar to “organic” or “free trade” labels, will help consumers choose products that have been made with bee-friendly methods.

The “Bee Better” certification program, launched in 2017 by the not-for-profit Xerces Society, introduces biodiversity into almond groves to naturally control pests and nourish honey bees. Xerces is working with almond growers to plant California wildflowers, mustard and clover in between the rows of trees and native flowering hedges along the perimeter of the orchard – a kind of eco-friendly fence to keep bees in the orchard.

The program scored a victory when Häagen-Dazs ice cream became the first food company to carry products with the Bee Better seal. The company’s bee-friendly vanilla milk chocolate almond bar was rolled out in December at Costco, Sam’s Club and BJ’s Wholesale Club, with three more bee-friendly almond ice cream flavors to be available in early 2020.

Letting nature take its course is nothing new for 81-year old Glenn Anderson. He is the first and still one of the few organic almond growers in California’s San Joaquin Valley. His 40-year-old orchard is small – just 20 acres – and has always been chemical free.

“We don’t have pests; we have biodiversity,” says Anderson, who primarily sells directly to individual customers through his Anderson Almonds company. 

Unlike large industrial almond farms that strip the orchard ground bare to more efficiently treat for insects and fungi, Anderson allows a rich understory to grow, which naturally nourishes the soil and strengthens the trees.

Anderson hires a “beekeeper hobbyist” from northern California every spring to install about 20 hives in his orchard. “We have the opposite of colony collapse at my farm,” says Anderson. “My beekeeper brings weak hives down that he wants to recharge on my property.”

Anderson says the tradeoff for not using pesticides is that his annual crop yield is lower – typically about 10,000 pounds – and he keeps his orchard small in order to manage its wildness. “I’m averse to an expansion model,” he says. “It doesn’t suit me much.”

And as for industrial-grown almonds? “They taste like cardboard,” he says.

Back in Arizona, Dennis Arp and his son Adam are just trying to make it through the next few months with as many healthy bees as possible.

There are days when the costs seem overwhelming, and Arp wonders if he should hang up his honey-stained bee suit. But beekeeping is what he knows best, and he wants to pass the business on to his son.

“I don’t know how we will pull it off yet,” he says. “But we will make it work.”

(Source: The Guardian)

Are vegetables vegan? The man taking aim at animal products in organic farming

Even if you avoid industrial farm produce it’s likely that your veggies will have been grown with the help of manure and other animal products

Will Bonsall is a homesteader and 45-year vegan living in rural Maine with a message for Americans – your vegetables are “very un-vegan”.

Bonsall is an influential member of a small but growing group of vegan and organic – “veganic” – farmers, who want to revolutionize organic agriculture, which traditionally depends on animals byproducts such as cow manure.

“There’s a little bit of a disconnect, even hypocrisy, in vegans … We vegans like to put on our plates [vegetables] grown in methods that are very un-vegan,” Bonsall said.“Most organic agriculture is focused on moo poo,” said Bonsall. “Cow manure, animal manure, but also blood meal and bone meal,” he said.

A tractor spreads muck over field of stubble. ‘Most organic agriculture is focused on moo poo,’ says ‘veganic’ farmer Will Bonsall. Photograph: geogphotos/Alamy Stock Photo

A vegan diet excludes all products derived from animals, including meat, dairy, eggs and honey. Often, these products are avoided for health, environmental and ethical reasons.

Standard organic vegetable farming practices have used animal-derived products for centuries to boost soil fertility, such as cow manure, which farmers like Bonsall argue supports large-scale industrialized animal farming and, in his estimation, is unethical.

But the question of whether organic farming should necessarily exclude animals is hardly settled. Even proponents of veganic farming describe it as “controversial”.

The Rodale Institute helped develop the US Department of Agriculture standard for organic farming. Researchers there are pushing not for veganic methods, but for “regenerative organic certification”, which they hope can promote animal welfare, social justice and soil health.

“We’re at a point in time where our soils have been so degraded that it is actually becoming more and more difficult to grow crops in those degraded soils,” said Jessica Lang, research coordinator for the Rodale Institute. “This word – regenerative – is one that really needs to get into the vocabulary of the general population,” she said.

Bonsall’s is one of just 50 or so veganic farms in the United States, according to research by Professor Mona Seymour of Loyola Marymount University. Bonsall’s method of growing “perennial food crops with minimal fossil fuel and animal inputs”, is laid out in his book, an Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening.

In a myopic sense, industrial agriculture – which uses nitrogen-fixing synthetic chemical fertilisers – is vegan. They are not derived from animals and allow farms to grow vegetables that are bigger and more tightly packed together, and free from animal manure and byproducts.

Freshly harvested Leeks from the plot...slightly various sizes, not huge but totally happy with them plus there’s many more 😆 Next year I’m going to try the multi sow approach 👍🏻🌱#leeks #allotment #veganic #nodig pic.twitter.com/k0Jebs8I4e

— Ellen Mary (@EllenMaryGarden) 1 December 2019

“The next logical step from that is growing organically but without animal manure,” said Jenny Hall, a trustee of the Vegan Organic Network based in the UK, and co-author of Growing Green: Animal-Free Organic Techniques. Hall has been vegan for 25 years.

“Within the organic movement it’s still controversial,” she said. “But actually, the reality is all plants are the original source of energy. In any ecological system plants are the bottom of the food chain, so it’s really just following nature’s cycle,” said Hall.

Industrial animal agriculture is one of the most environmentally damaging activities humans do, and many believe vegetarian and especially vegan eating could radically decrease greenhouse gas output.

If the world adopted a vegan diet, a recent study in Science found, global farmland use would shrink by 75%, equivalent to the area of the US, European Union, China and Australia combined. Industrial animal agriculture is the second-largest contributor to human-made greenhouse gas emissions after fossil fuels and is a leading cause of deforestation, water and air pollution and biodiversity loss.

Veganic farms remain small scale now, and less developed in the United States than in the European Union, where growers already have a certifying body, called “biocyclic vegan”. In the US, there is no certification, and veganic produce is harder to find, though not impossible if buying direct from farmers, Hall said.

To date, most veganic farmers are growing vegetables and fruits. As interest in veganic farming grows, the next phase of the movement is to bring onboard traditional grain farmers, Hall said.

“For a long time, no one gave two poops about the organic movement, because it was just a bunch of hippies,” said Bonsall. For decades, many argued if world agriculture went organic “we have to decide which third of the world is going to starve to death,” because without petrochemicals farmers couldn’t grow the necessary amount of produce. “Nowadays, there are lots of people doing it, and I’m just another fly on the wall.”

(Source: The Guardian) 

What the pesticides in our urine tell us about organic food

A study helps answer a question many of us ask when deciding whether to buy organic food: Does it really make a difference?

When Andreina Febres, a mother of two living in Oakland, California, signed up for a study evaluating whether an organic diet could make a difference in the amount of pesticides found in her body, she didn’t know what researchers would find. But her family, and the three others across the country that participated, would discover that they all had detectable levels of the pesticides being tracked. They would also discover that after only six days on an organic diet, every single person would see significant drops in those pesticides, including several linked to increased risk of autism, cancer, Parkinson’s, infertility, and other significant impacts on health.

“It’s good to see that just after a week there was a dramatic drop,” Febres said after seeing the results. “I would love to get those pesticides out of my body and my family’s bodies.”

This just-published peer-reviewed study helps answer a question many of us ask when deciding whether to reach for the conventional or organic option at the store: does organic really make a difference? The results say yes, a big difference. Choosing organic can protect you from exposure to toxic pesticides.

 A study shows that eating organic can dramatically decrease the pesticides
you’re exposed to. Photograph: Dave Martin/AP

This study, led by researchers at University of California, Berkeley and Friends of the Earth, and co-authored by one of us, tracked pesticide levels in four families from across the country for two weeks. The first week, the families ate their typical diets of non-organic food; the following week, they ate completely organic. Urine samples taken over the course of the study were tested for pesticides and the chemicals pesticides break down into, called metabolites.

The results? Of the 14 chemicals tested, every single member of every family had detectable levels. After switching to an organic diet, these levels dropped dramatically. Levels across all pesticides dropped by more than half on average. Detectable levels for the pesticide malathion, a probable human carcinogen according to the World Health Organization, decreased a dramatic 95% .

Malathion was just one of the pesticides found in this study that are part of a group called organophosphates, which have long concerned public health experts because of their impact on children’s developing brains. Created as nerve agents in World War II, organophosphates have been linked to increased rates of autism, learning disabilities, and reduced IQ in children. The organophosphate chlorpyrifos, found in all of the family members, is so worrisome to public health that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) planned to ban it in 2017 – a proposal dropped by the Trump administration. In the wake of inaction from the administration, Hawaii passed the first state level chlorpyrifos ban in 2018; and Representative Nydia Velázquez introduced a federal bill to ban it.

This brings us back to the case for organic. When you choose organically-grown products, you’re guaranteed they were not grown with chlorpyrifos or the roughly 900 synthetic pesticides allowed in non-organic agriculture. Many of these pesticides are now understood to cause cancer, affect the body’s hormonal systems, disrupt fertility, cause developmental delay for children or Parkinson’s, depression, or Alzheimer’s as we age. This study shows that eating organic can dramatically decrease the pesticides you’re exposed to.

But we know providing people with information about the benefits of choosing organic foods is not enough. Far too many of us don’t have the choice. Today, billions of our tax dollars are subsidizing pesticide-intensive agriculture while organic programs and research are woefully underfunded. This misdirection of public dollars is one of the reasons many people across the country still don’t have access to, or can’t afford, organic food.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has argued that in a modern, moral, wealthy society, no person should be too poor to live. We believe it follows that in such a society, none of us should be too poor to afford food raised without toxic chemicals and that all of us should be able to support a food chain that protects the health of farmers, farmworkers and communities who are otherwise on the fron-tlines of pesticide exposure.

As another mother in the study put it: “Health should not be limited to your income, your education, your race, your gender, or your geographic location. I think everyone has the right to clean, organic food.”

Organic for all, is that too radical of an ask?

(Source: The Guardian)

The diet to save lives, the planet and feed us all?

A diet has been developed that promises to save lives, feed 10 billion people and all without causing catastrophic damage to the planet.

Scientists have been trying to figure out how we are going to feed billions more people in the decades to come.

Their answer - "the planetary health diet" - does not completely banish meat and dairy.

But it requires an enormous shift in what we pile onto our plates and turning to foods that we barely eat.

What changes am I going to have to make?
If you eat meat every day then this is the first biggie. For red meat you're looking at a burger a week or a large steak a month and that's your lot.

You can still have a couple of portions of fish and the same of chicken a week, but plants are where the rest of your protein will need to come from.

The researchers are recommending nuts and a good helping of legumes (that's beans, chickpeas and lentils) every day instead.

There's also a major push on all fruit and veg, which should make up half of every plate of food we eat.

Although there's a cull on "starchy vegetables" such as the humble potato or cassava which is widely eaten in Africa.

So what is the diet in detail?
If you served it all up this is what you are allowed each day:

1. Nuts - 50g a day
2. Beans, chickpeas, lentils and other legumes - 75g a day
3. Fish - 28g a day
4. Eggs - 13g a day (so one and a bit a week)
5. Meat - 14g a day of red meat and 29g a day of chicken
6. Carbs - whole grains like bread and rice 232g a day and 50g a day of starchy vegetables
7. Dairy - 250g - the equivalent of one glass of milk
8. Vegetables (300g) and fruit (200g)

The diet has room for 31g of sugar and about 50g worth of oils like olive oil.

Will it taste awful?
Prof Walter Willet, one of the researchers who is based at Harvard, said no and that after a childhood on a farm eating three portions of red meat a day he was now pretty much in line with the planetary health diet.

He said: "There's tremendous variety there.

"You can take those foods and put them together in thousands of different ways. We're not talking about a deprivation diet here, it is healthy eating that is flexible and enjoyable."

These are some plates of food that meet the planetary health diet rules.

Is this for real life, or is this just fantasy?
This plan requires changes to diets in pretty much every corner of the world.

Europe and North America need to cut back massively on red meat, East Asia needs to cut back on fish, Africa on starchy vegetables.

"Humanity has never attempted to change the food system at this scale and this speed," says Line Gordon, an assistant professor at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

"Whether it's a fantasy or not, a fantasy doesn't have to be bad... it's time to dream of a good world," she says.

Taxes on red meat are one of the many options the researchers say may be necessary to persuade us to switch diets.

Who came up with this?
A group of 37 scientists from around the world were brought together as part of the EAT-Lancet commission.

They're a mix of experts from farming to climate change to nutrition and they took two years to come up with their findings which have been published in the Lancet.

Why do we need a diet for 10 billion people?
The world population reached 7 billion in 2011 and it's now around 7.7 billion.

That figure is expected to reach 10 billion around 2050 and will keep on climbing.

Will it save lives?
The researchers say the diet will prevent around 11 million people dying each year.

That number is largely down to cutting diseases related to unhealthy diets such as heart attacks, strokes and some cancers.

These are now the biggest killers in developed countries.

How bad is farming for the planet?
The use of land for growing food and forestry accounts for around a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions, about the same as from electricity and heating, and substantially more than from all the trains, planes and automobiles on the planet.

When you look more closely at the food sector's environmental impact, you can see that meat and dairy are the major factors - worldwide, livestock accounts for between 14.5 and 18% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.

When it comes to other warming gases, agriculture is one of the leading contributors to both methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

Agriculture is also a significant source of air pollution with ammonia from farms a major cause of fine particulate matter, which the WHO says is a threat to health worldwide.

Similarly when it comes to water, agriculture and food productions are one of the biggest threats, consuming 70% of global freshwater sources for irrigation.

So will the planetary health diet save the planet?
The researchers aim was to feed more people while:

• minimising greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change
• preventing any species going extinct
• have no expansion of farmland
• and preserve water

However, just changing diets is nowhere near enough.

In order to make the numbers add up, it also requires a halving of food waste and to increase the amount of food produced on current farmland.

Why isn't meat being banned?
"If we were just minimising greenhouse gases we'd say everyone be vegan," said Prof Willet.

However, he said it was unclear whether a vegan diet was the healthiest option.

So what happens now?
The EAT-Lancet Commission is going to take their findings to governments around the world and bodies such as the World Health Organization to see if they can begin to change the way we eat.

(Source: BBC)

‘Our faith will be lost if we adopt technology’: Can the Amish resist the modern world?

Theirs is a traditional life of faith, family and work, without cars or smartphones – and their community is growing

Daniel Weaver does not vote, drive a car, read a paper, listen to music, watch sport of any kind, own a mobile phone or use a computer. But as we eat the food grown in his garden outside the window, he confesses that he did once see a film. He refuses to disclose what, brushing aside my questions as we sit talking around the dining table with his wife, five of his eight children and one grandson. “I am not proud of that,” he says. “I went against my parents’ wishes.”

But this one-off incident, many years ago, speaks to the reasons why this 52-year-old sold his thriving Ohio clothing business, one that supplied hundreds of stores across North America, and moved his family to this idyllic farm in upstate New York three years ago. Daniel is Amish – a member of a community famed worldwide for their plain clothes and use of horse-drawn buggies – and he fears the impact of modernity and the temptations of technology on his children, his church and his traditional Christian world. “Our values are different and we chose to safeguard them,” he says. “But if our people get lax and rub elbows too much with the world, then the world may not look too different – we become like the people outside.”

A horse-drawn cart in Morris passes women wearing traditional white bonnets. Photograph: Dan Callister

Instead, he has returned to the Amish tradition of farming, enjoying a homespun lifestyle that eschews things the rest of us take for granted – from televisions to trouser belts, in case they distract from a devotion to God. This German-speaking sect, which demands simple lives of self-reliance based on the Bible, may be at odds with the rest of today’s society – yet surprisingly, it is booming, rather than being swamped by a fast-evolving world of smartphones and social media.

In 1989, there were some 100,000 Amish scattered in 179 settlements across North America. Recent analysis by academics at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania found numbers have surged to 330,265 Amish in 546 settlements. It is the fastest-growing faith group on the continent, with predictions that there might be more than 1 million adherents by 2050. This marks an extraordinary turnaround: there were only 5,000 Amish in America a century ago.

 I’ve heard a lot about Facebook, but it seems a waste of time
Perhaps most remarkably, the reason for this population explosion is not just the traditional big Amish families. Children are actively choosing to stay in communities, resisting the lure of clubs, sport, music and technology. “I’ve heard a lot about Facebook, but it seems a waste of time,” says Michael, 15, one of Daniel’s four sons, over fresh tomato soup. “I can be doing things a lot more beneficial than going to bars or spending time looking at a phone.” Children can choose to be baptised into the church in their late teens – and researchers say retention rates appear to have risen in recent decades.

It is not just computers and cars that families turn their backs on. Many Amish reject mains electricity and some refuse indoor plumbing, while wives must follow the decisions of their husbands; divorce is an impermissible sin. Children carry out chores from infancy. Yet behind those distinctive long beards for men and white bonnets for women, there are some smart business brains, with soaring numbers of multimillionaires. I speak to one man running a firm with 500 employees that he started aged 50 in his barn, while others have become wealthy from land ownership as their population expands, driving up land values.

Austere clothing is one of the defining markers of the Amish. Photograph: Dan Callister

Most Amish people live in small communities of about 20 households, clustered around churches that set their own rules; they can now be found in 30 states, as well as Canada, Argentina and Bolivia. “When you have families of 13 people and most stay with the faith, then you end up with lots of people,” says Karen Johnson-Weiner, an anthropology professor and author of books on the Amish (though she is not Amish herself). “For the most part, I have seen shared labour and a sense of working together that we do not have any more. What I have always most admired is the strength of their families.”

A range of factors, from ending the draft in 1973, which forced young Amish men (as conscientious objectors) to carry out community work, through to a more recent trend towards educating Amish children in their own schools, has meant less interaction with the outside world. This has reinforced a sense of separatism and fuelled higher retention rates than in the years before the second world war, when differences with wider society were less stark.

New York’s Amish community is among the fastest-growing, with 58 settlements, mainly in the north of the state. Settlers are lured by land cheaper than in the Amish heartlands of Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania – the photogenic backdrop for the film Witness, starring Harrison Ford as a police officer hiding in the community. In the small market town of Morris, where the Weavers now live, there are seven Amish households in an area that has seen scores of small farms go out of business.

But their neighbours seem to welcome them, not least because they have revived derelict farms. “They are well liked here,” says Leslie Stroh, a publisher who worked on Daniel’s fields as a boy. “They don’t integrate, and why should they? But they are still very open to us.” There have been tensions in other places, however, over issues such as horse droppings on roads, and refusing to install hazard lights on buggies.

Sam Weaver with his son in Morris, New York. Photograph: Dan Callister

Stopping in the centre of this quiet town, I meet an elderly Amish man visiting the post office on his bicycle, who turns out to be Daniel’s father, Roy. A widower who moved here a year ago, following his son, he politely answers my questions and talks me through some of the Amish community’s basic beliefs – about following “the old ways” as set out in the Bible. Later I learn the family was driven to move by cheaper land, tensions over technology in their previous church, and Daniel’s desire to spend more time with his family. He is building a store to sell local produce, while Sam, his eldest son, runs a dairy farm.

That evening, Daniel asks me to join his household for dinner, an unusual invitation. But the meal is punctuated by laughter, as the Weavers describe a way of life that revolves around faith, family and work. “I feel you can be trusted, so you are sitting at my table,” Daniel says. “But on a friendship level, our values are very different. We would not want to mix with you, because if our children came to your home, they might sit and watch television.”

 The Bible says a husband must love his wife and if a wife follows his lead then you will have a happy family
We discuss their attitudes to issues such as girls’ and women’s rights, the conversation carrying on into the following day. “The Bible says a husband must love his wife and if a wife follows his lead then you will have a happy family,” says Sam, 28, a father of four. “If God’s ways are followed, then a contented family will result under our culture.” When I press him on the fairness of this, he argues they are all – men and women alike – following divine command. While the family insist all key decisions are shared, it is noticeable that the women are reticent in these male-dominated discussions. They are also more likely to carry out the traditional tasks of cleaning and cooking. Ira, Daniel’s wife, describes her day to me: “quiet time praying”, then “the girls help with breakfast and we are done by seven so the men can go out.” Her husband tells me Ira is not a “women’s libber”.

The couple’s lively one-year-old grandson, Nathan, joins us at the table, along with his father, Josh. His wife – Daniel and Ira’s oldest daughter – died of Hodgkin lymphoma when she was just 23, soon after the boy’s birth. They tell me this was deeply painful and that they miss her profoundly, but believe there is a higher purpose to such loss. “To us, death is not God’s punishment. God is in control of life and death,” Daniel says.

***

The Amish are followers of Jacob Amman, a hardline Swiss bishop who broke with the Mennonite faith in 1693. The Amish began emigrating to America in the 18th century, mostly settling in Pennsylvania. In the 1930s, they came to wider attention and were romanticised for resisting moves to shut down the small schools their children attended. Later generations have found other aspects of their lifestyle to admire: in the 60s, counterculture rebels looked to them as off-grid pioneers; in the 80s, they were celebrated for their traditional craft skills; more recently, it’s been their long tradition of organic farming, with branded grocers opening in New York City.

One of Daniel Weaver’s sons. Photograph: Dan Callister

Outsiders are allowed to join the community – though only an estimated one in three stick with the creed; they are encouraged to spend time living the Amish lifestyle for several months before baptism into the church.

Converts include Marlene Miller, a former high school majorette who joined half a century ago, after marrying an Amish man. In a memoir, she wrote that the hardest things were learning to speak German and to sew; just three of her 10 children are still in the faith.

Although clearly devout, with hymn sheets stuck to his own kitchen table for the family to sing together, Sam admits to me the day after our dinner that, as a teenager, he questioned his belief – if it “was a learned thing rather than the truth”. He has friends who have left to join “the English” – the Amish term for outsiders. He also confesses that, as a bird-watcher, he would love to have a camera. “But our values are down to our connection to a faith that will be discarded if we adopt technology.”

 Women in the community are more likely to carry out the traditional tasks of cleaning and cooking. Photograph: Dan Callister

Sam, who has travelled abroad, says he is old enough to remember a pre-digital era, before computers and smartphones. “I can see the big changes they have brought to society, which my children will never see. There is more independence on the individual level, but people have become more selfish – everything is for themselves. We value the idea of working for the betterment of everyone. Christ said we are to be a light to the world. We are not saying we want everyone to be Amish, or that we are better, but our goal in a selfish society is to show people that it works if we are honest in our dealings, respect people and go the extra mile.”

Watching him lead one of his young sons around the lush fields and milking his cows, assisted by a younger brother and automated machinery, it’s clear this thoughtful man loves the rural way of life, with his 800 cows and renovated old buildings. He is scathing, however, about industrialised farming, with tens of thousands of cattle in one place. “In America, we are so driven by capitalism that everything has to get bigger and bigger all the time,” he says.

They may use a horse and buggy for trips into town, clip-clopping along the roads alongside thundering trucks, but the Amish will take taxis and trains when needed. I am surprised to learn that both Sam and Daniel have flown abroad, to places such as Guatemala and Haiti for charity work. Daniel explains that the Amish reject many modern items for fear of assimilation. So they do not own cars, for instance, because the machines detach people from their extended families too easily and can create envy, not because they are deemed “sinful” in themselves.

Daniel does not buy a newspaper, because he does not want his children becoming interested in sport – “sport seems to be the God of America, so competitive and with so much money” – yet they play volleyball and he will happily read a paper if he finds one on a train. So they know about their disruptive president, despite opting out of the electoral process. Yet when I mention Donald Trump’s bellicose language on North Korea, one young adult asks me if his country has gone to war.

Daniel Weaver on his farm. Photograph: Dan Callister

Given the world’s political turbulence, such ignorance might sound almost blissful. But some who leave the Amish community have spoken about a dark side to the peaceable Amish facade; people who leave the church can be shunned by their families for the rest of their lives. I am told of one person, for instance, who was recently barred from attending her own mother’s funeral, having walked out of the sect.

Former church member Ira Wagler wrote a bestseller called Growing Up Amish, the story of how he stole away in the middle of the night, aged 17 – finally quitting the church nine years later, on his fifth attempt. “People put the Amish on a pedestal but they are just people,” he tells me. “There are some very good things about their culture that I respect, now I have joined the real world. I was taken to the top of our house, given a goose wing and made to sweep steps as my job when I was only three. The message is you do not deserve anything unless it’s earned. But if someone’s barn burns down, you help rebuild it.”

Wagler tells me that Amish children have little sense of the outside world. “My childhood had great security, with black-and-white boundaries in a very warm community. It was on a farm, so we worked and played – out in the fields or fishing in the creeks. I have very warm memories.” But he points out the flipside of such isolation, and the intense pressure to stay loyal to the church. “It is mind control. You knew that if you stepped outside the culture you’d go to hell. It was only in my mid-20s that I realised: you don’t have to be Amish.”

Like others, he talks about the impact of technology, which many Amish recognise has confronted them with existential dilemmas. Some already use mobile phones; children are secretly using social media; and those with businesses often need email and a website. Meanwhile, firms and retailers are using notes and coins less; a cashless society could ultimately force even the most conservative groups to adopt technology.

 Most Amish people live in small communities of about 20 households. Photograph: Dan Callister

“The smartphone is a threat to the Amish not only for the darker aspects of the internet, such as access to pornography, but also for the way it can change the way we behave,” says Erik Wesner, founder of the authoritative Amish America website. “We have all got quickly used to finding instant solutions online. These can erode traditional values that the Amish revere, such as patience and dependence upon their community. And unlike a car or pickup truck, a smartphone is easily hidden.”

Yet Wesner believes the Amish will adapt, with more conservative groups resisting the digital age for as long as possible, just as some still resist electricity and modern plumbing while the majority retain defining markers such as austere clothing and a ban on car ownership. “They do gradually change, although at slower pace.”

One comparatively recent adaptation has been the shift from farming to business. One study found more than 10,000 Amish-owned firms across the US – with lower failure rates than average, despite the fact that most Amish leave school at 14, making them unlikely entrepreneurs.

One of the biggest is a kitchen cabinet business started by Ola Yoder in his barn two decades ago. It now churns out 6,000 units a day from an industrial park in Indiana, employing 500 staff. Unusually, Yoder, now 72, spent seven years outside the Amish in his early 20s. “I saw how other people lived and decided it was not for me or my kids,” he says, although he still has many “English” friends. He also spent time working for a major company. “They had rules about drugs and swearing, but no one enforced them,” he says. “In corporate America, it is all about climbing up the ladder.”

Yoder bans mobile phones at work, asking why you would want to employ someone who is always texting, and says he sticks to Amish values in business. “Success is about finding peace within yourself and your family. For the Amish, money is just a tool to enable you to live your faith. What good would it do, to have smart cars and fly all over the world?”

Before I leave Morris, with its rolling farmland and warning signs urging drivers to beware of horse-drawn buggies, Daniel tells me he knows outsiders think their approach to life looks outdated and tough. “But all those seeking freedom seem to have more traps than ever – all their cars, computers and televisions seem to make their lives more morose,” he says. “I think our lifestyle is actually easier.”

That may be true. But only time will tell, as their numbers continue to rise, whether they can hold out against what Sam Weaver calls “the glitz and glamour” of the modern world.

(Source: The Guardian)

Modern myths about cancer – from ‘chemicals’ in food to wifi

The idea that lifestyle changes have made the disease more common is a gross exaggeration – but increasingly prevalent. The team of The Guardian separates fact from fiction, Read on: 

Cancer is not up there with the most likely explanations for what caused the mass extinction 66m years ago of the T rex and the triceratops. That said, at least one species of dinosaur suffered from blood-vessel tumours – and a 1.7m-year-old toe with bone cancer was discovered in 2016 at a South African world heritage site.

Cancer may have been more common in ancient times than we will ever know, because fossilisation will have obliterated most evidence of the disease. However, misinterpretations of some small studies and claims by self-styled wellness gurus that cancer is “a man-made disease” have fed the belief that cancer is modern. While that does not mean anyone concerned about cancer should visit their local natural history museum for information, thinking of cancer as a result of modern life causes unnecessary fear. Here are some modern myths about cancer.

Mobile phones and wifi
There have been worries about mobile phones causing cancer since the days of playing Snake on a Nokia. Considering how widespread mobile phone use has been for decades, it would be impossible not to notice if they posed serious health risks. In the US, hardly anyone used a mobile phone in 1992. By 2008, mobile-phone use was widespread, yet the number of people who got a brain tumour barely changed. The World Health Organization’s Interphone study, which studied thousands of people across 13 countries between 2000 and 2006, also found that mobile phones did not increase a person’s chance of getting a brain tumour.

 Breaking or stressing DNA requires a great deal of energy, far beyond the capabilities of mobile phones
Fundamentally, cancer is caused by our DNA becoming damaged and sending normal healthy-cell-replication processes askew. Ionising radiation, such as in x-rays or radiotherapy, carries a huge amount of energy. Mobile phones, however, carry a tiny amount of energy. Breaking or stressing DNA requires a great deal of energy, far beyond the capabilities of mobile phones. Wifi, incidentally, transmits even less energy than a mobile phone.

Note, also, that not all scientific studies are created equal. Reviews or meta-analyses, where scientists look at many research studies together, give the most accurate idea of what is happening. One such review concluded: “Overall, the existing evidence for a causal relationship between RF [radiofrequency] radiation from cell phones and cancer is found to be weak to nonexistent.” The International Agency for Research on Cancer lists mobile phones as “possible carcinogens”, but this classification means only that there may be a hypothetical link that cannot be ruled out, rather than that there is a real likelihood of something causing cancer.

Organic farming
There is a popular belief, helped along by bloggers with dubious expertise, that organic food has “anti-cancer” properties. However, Michelle McCully, the head of research interpretation at the World Cancer Research Fund, one of the world’s leading authorities on diet and cancer, says: “There is currently no strong evidence to support the idea that organic foods offer added protection against cancer compared to conventionally grown produce.”

The Soil Association says any claims that organic food has anti-cancer properties are ‘not backed by strong scientific evidence’. Photograph: Valentin Russanov/Getty Images

The Soil Association, the UK’s organic certification body, says: “Any claims around organic and cancer are not backed by strong scientific evidence.” Other benefits to organic farming are real, though, including better animal welfare, more environmentally sustainable farming (there is on average 50% more wildlife on organic farms) and reduced use of antibiotics in animals and pesticides in plants.

Chemicals and pollution
“Chemicals” is a much misunderstood word – everything, including the air we breathe, is a “chemical”. EU regulations protect us against exposure to levels of industrial chemicals that would harm our health. There is a slight risk of lung cancer associated with air pollution, but it is important to keep this in context and to realise that the risk to each individual is tiny.

‘There is a slight risk of lung cancer associated with air pollution.’ Photograph: Nick Ansell/PA

Katie Edmunds from Cancer Research UK says: “In the era of fake news, there are plenty of cancer-related myths that people don’t need to worry about, such as using plastic bottles or deodorant. We know that air pollution can increase the risk of lung cancer and it’s important that the government does what it can to tackle this. But, in terms of things people can do themselves, the best advice is to stop smoking, keep a healthy weight and enjoy the sun safely.”

The grain of truth
What is true is that cancer is becoming more common. This is largely because it is a disease of old age. Many people now have cancer who in earlier times would have died much younger.

That said, some aspects of our modern lifestyles do increase our chances of getting cancer. The World Cancer Research Fund’s cancer prevention recommendations, which are based on decades of strong evidence, provide a package of healthy lifestyle choices that, along with not smoking and avoiding excess sun exposure, represent a blueprint for reducing cancer risk.

 Sunburn is associated with skin cancer. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

As Cancer Research UK’s Emma Shields says: “Being overweight or obese is the second-biggest preventable cause of cancer in the UK. Every year, around 22,800 cases of cancer are caused by being overweight or obese. Despite this, only 15% of people [are] aware of the link.”

Lack of exercise and consumption of alcohol are other risk factors, but anyone who wants to improve their health through diet should be particularly careful about the qualifications of the people from whom they take advice. Dietitians, who spend years in medical training, are the best people to talk to.