Editor,

RE: "Pesticide use killing bees, threatening food security” (The New Times, November 12).

The consequences of the decimation of bees through the extensive use of pesticides are not limited to honey production. Bees play a central role in plant pollination and fertilization. Plants are, of course, the very base of the planet’s food chain and therefore of life.

Pesticides, especially of the chemical kind, are highly disruptive of the equilibrium of the essential ecosystem that sustains life on earth. If the ordinary use of pesticides can have these effects, just try to imagine what pesticides linked to the widespread use of genetically-modified organism seeds (intensive application of such highly environmentally damaging pesticides-herbicides as Monsanto’s Roundup) will do to our environment.

The destruction of our honey-bees is just a mild warning of much worse things to come should we fall for the dangerous blandishments of the agrochemical industry and their GMOs.

Mwene Kalinda