Join us as we explore the fascinating dynamics between insects, microbes, and plants with renowned entomologist Dr. Tom Dykstra. Learn about the vital role of microbes in plant nutrition and the detrimental impacts of conventional pesticides. This conversation opens a window into innovative farming techniques that prioritize not just crop yield, but the nutritional quality of our food. Whether you’re a seasoned farmer or a curious consumer, this episode offers valuable perspectives on the future of agriculture and food security.
Welcome to the conclusion of Real Science Radio’s interview with Dr. Tom Dykstra on insects, pesticides, and its impacts on our health.
SPEAKER 04 :
Intelligent Design and DNA Scholars can’t explain it all away.
SPEAKER 1 :
Get ready to be awed by the handiwork of God. Tune in to Real Science Radio. Turn up the Real Science Radio.
SPEAKER 04 :
Keeping it real.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, that blows my mind because I just always assumed that the bugs were there and they wanted to eat the healthiest plants because I didn’t know anything about it. But this opens up a whole new reality, which that’s what I love about Real Science Radio and bringing folks on like you, Dr. Dykstra. It’s mind-boggling and expanding. Wow, love it.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, is there any kind of thinking outside of the box, like, okay, you want to protect your plants, so you plant, or somehow you get some unhealthy plants mixed in with your healthy plants to, like, draw all the insects to… Well, that’s what I wanted to get to.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s how I wanted to get to the farmers, because I do care about my neighbors, and some of my neighbors are farmers.
SPEAKER 02 :
You’re trying to save yourself right now. I see where you’re going.
SPEAKER 05 :
So, no, but I did want to, because I’m sure that you offering agricultural consulting advice to me is probably not going to put food on your table, but to big farmers, can you help them with your knowledge to avoid pesticides and better manage their crops? And how does that happen?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yes, I can. Oh, I’m sorry. There was a follow-up. How to do that. Got it.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s what we love about the radio.
SPEAKER 02 :
I was like, man, this is awesome. I got a short question, one-word answer. That’s the perfect radio answer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How to do it. It really depends. There are different crops, and I would approach them differently. So it’s going to depend upon what has been done on the land for a long time. So in other words, am I dealing with toxic soil? If I’m dealing with toxic soil, there are some things I’m not going to be able to put into the soil because the roots aren’t going to be able to pull them up, in which case I have to resort to foliar feeding. We understand how God has set things up, and that is that plants do not get their nutrients through the leaves with the exception of carbon dioxide and water. They open up the stomata. and those two main ingredients get inside, whereas the rest of the nutrients traditionally come in through the root system. And so because of this, if I’m dealing with toxic soil, because the farmer’s been putting down 30 years’ worth of pesticides, I have to approach it differently. If I’m dealing with an organic grower who doesn’t have the pesticides and hasn’t had it on for a while, there’s going to be a different approach when we’re looking to see. I do want to take a look at the Brix levels. I want to know where they’re at. because if they’re at two bricks that’s different than eight bricks, it’s different than 10 bricks, it’s different than 14. So I need to know what is our starting point, what are they lacking right now, and in some cases we may need to order some other tests. So if we find out that the bricks levels are very low, I have a number of questions I’m going to ask them. I want to source the seed to find out if the problem is with seed, we want to take a look at the soil to see if the soil is the problem, And then we establish if we need a soil test, we’ll order it. If I need a tissue test of the plant, I will order it. If I need a plant sap analysis test, which tells you about the movement of nutrients inside the plant, I can order that too. Those all cost money, but they also add a lot of information and help the farmer to become a little bit more complete. when he’s trying to understand his crops so that we can zero in on what the problem is and then start to move in various inputs in order to help improve the situation so that the farmer not only can make a profit, because right now they’re not making enough profit right now. Some of them are at zero. Some of them are breaking even. Many of them are going out of business, and so I have made it, I wouldn’t call it my life mission, but it’s certainly become an important part of my job in order to keep farmers in business so that they can continue to not only farm, especially if they enjoy it, many of them do or they can even pass it on to their children if they wanted to do that because a lot of the children right now if they see dad struggling they don’t want to take over the farm and they just want to move on to something else because it looks too hard and they’re not making the money that they should be and so there are lots of different ways to approach that and so these are some of the questions that i ask and some of the approaches that i have in order to help a farmer reach the point where he’s actually making profit once again
SPEAKER 05 :
Awesome. Hey, you can cut that and you can use that for an ad. I would say hire that guy if I’m a farmer. Now, but in everything you just said, are you saying that pesticides are bad for plants?
SPEAKER 02 :
Pesticides are bad for plants, but not as bad as the microbes in the soil. So most of the problem with pesticides is that they’re killing the microbes in the soil. So the insecticides are taking out microbes, the fungicides are taking out microbes, the herbicides are taking out microbes, the nematicides are taking out microbes and when you take out the microbes the microbes raise the plant they’re the ones putting nutrients into the roots they’re either bringing them into the roots or they’re bringing them in close proximity to the roots without the microbes you can’t get copper manganese iron cobalt you can’t get a lot of these micronutrients into the plant without these microbes And if you can’t get the microbes in the plant, it’s not photosynthesizing the way that it should be. And the plant is not photosynthesizing. It doesn’t produce sugar. And if it doesn’t have the sugar being produced, it comes in as a low-bricks plant when I measure it. So we know that there’s a problem. The plant is not photosynthesizing in the way that it should. All plants want to be photosynthesizing above 10 bricks and preferably at 14 and above. Right now, we’re not getting that with a number of crops that are out there. And so corrective measures need to be made in this process. So yes, to answer your question, the pesticides are not helping the situation. They are usually there in order to help a low brick situation. Low bricks farming is expensive because you often have to protect it from insects and put on an insecticide. You often have to protect it from a fungus infection and so you put on a fungicide. You often have weed problems because the soil is not healthy and you have to put on herbicides. So low brix farming is expensive. If you switch to a high brix farming, the inputs go down and it becomes much more affordable because if you’re getting let’s say $900 an acre for corn, and you reduce your inputs from $870, which is the current average right now, down to about $300 to $400 of input, your profit goes through the roof.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, wow. It sounds like a vicious circle to me. If you’ve got a low-bricks farm… and then you’re putting pesticide on it, and you’re maybe getting rid of some of the insects, but you’re also kind of promoting the low bricks, right? That’s correct.
SPEAKER 05 :
So this alters my understanding of everything related to farming. I assumed… That the farmer, it was basically constantly at war with bugs and weeds. And I assume that most farmers simply prophylactically applied pesticides and fungicides to their crops. They do. Okay, so that assumption’s not right, but maybe that’s not the best way to be doing it.
SPEAKER 02 :
Not the best way to be doing it. Yeah, it’s usually done quite routinely. Farmers are often spreading that, even if they don’t think they might need it, but they might need it later on. Well, I’ll just spray it just in case. You’re talking about usually a minimum of $30 an acre for a given pesticide. It doesn’t get much lower than that. especially if you have an aerial application and some of them can get to be 125 per acre and this is very very expensive to be putting down one pesticide or two pesticides or three pesticides it gets to the point where the inputs get to be higher and higher and higher which bites into your profits more and more and more Therefore, if you teach the farmer that there is a better way to get this done and that you can reduce your inputs, then clearly we should be going in that direction. But right now, they need to be taught because your preconception of what farmers are doing is mostly true. That’s why they need to be told that there is a better way. And so, for example, you have to mention, you know, that for thousands of years, we weren’t using pesticides and plants were still coming up. And so once you introduce that logic, especially if they understand whether or not you’re reading your Bible or whether you’re not, you know. that people have been raising plants for thousands of years. The evidence is there. And so because of this, we also knew about spreading salts. That’s a reference from 3,000 years ago from the Bible too. And so you’ve got these references right now where salt is bad, which is why I steer people away from salt-based NPK fertilizers, salt-based pesticides, that there is a certain inherent danger with them, especially if you keep applying them repeatedly during the season, year after year, decade after decade. the land becomes degraded to the point where it becomes very difficult in order to raise healthy crops. And in so doing, the insects will come in and start eating those same crops.
SPEAKER 05 :
Wow. OK, so you’re saying some things that upset the paradigm of farming. And from what I understand, based on the research I’ve been able to do, you have some experience with this. You studied and basically challenged the olfactory model in insects. Did I read that right? And can you explain to me what that was and was that a significant controversy?
SPEAKER 02 :
Still is. I don’t think it’s going to end before I’m dead and six feet under. So the Inceptile Factory 3 right now is based upon a classic lock and key mechanism where the odorant goes inside the insect antenna and it is detected there through a classic lock and key mechanism. We understand this mechanism because we understand that this is in part how noses work. So noses, you know, You breathe in because you’re trying to get odorants to come into your nose and then they often get, although it’s not necessarily a lock and key model because there is a new model involving electron tunneling out there, and these models all involve close contact with the receptor. With insects, there seems to be no way that close contact can occur. because these odorants cannot readily make it inside the antenna based upon some of the scientific evidence that is out there right there. And if they’re not getting inside the antenna, but we know that the insects can smell within about one millisecond, 10 milliseconds at the slowest, one millisecond, if not below one millisecond at the fastest, this then causes me and others to think that there’s probably another process involved in insect olfaction. so if it’s operating at a distance they’ll be at a very small distance probably no more than three millimeters probably less where it simply needs to get in close contact with the antenna and then the electromagnetic signature these vibrational frequencies are picked up by the antenna and then it is then detected by chemoreceptors on the inside of these antenna they have certain absorption frequencies that are associated with these chemoreceptors and I then break them down and decipher the insect olfactory code by taking a look at these chemoreceptors. I see your eyes starting to glaze over, so I’m going to stop right now. Well, that was an interesting fact. Yeah. Oh, speaking of interesting fact.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, the interesting fact of the week, Fred.
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, we got to do the interesting fact of the week. Yes. Right? Oh, yes. Doug, are you ready?
SPEAKER 05 :
Dr. Dykstra may not be familiar, but this is the part in the show that the whole audience has been waiting for the whole time, Dr. Dykstra.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s the interesting fact of the week. Okay, so here is the interesting fact of the week. Doug, what is the fastest flying insect in the world?
SPEAKER 05 :
The fastest flying insect is that bee that got in my car. I think that was the fastest flying. It’s the fastest one I ever encountered. But you’re talking about overall. You can’t buzz me for a joke. Maybe that means it’s not a very good joke. So you’re talking about the fastest insect throughout all the insect kingdom. So I would have to try to think of who is the king of the insects and who would be the fastest flying insect. And first of all, I would question, how do we know? That’s my first, I’m just going to file that objection right there. Because I don’t think there’s been a race. Oh yeah, policemen are always out there with their radar. Boy, that’s a tough one. Can I ask for help? So the dragonfly? No, dragonflies are slow.
SPEAKER 02 :
Dragonfly is the best flyer, not necessarily the fastest. Is that right? But they are the best. They have the maneuverability. So they are the best flyers in class Insecta. So you’re not too far off. Now, you’d be wrong based upon how the question was asked.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh.
SPEAKER 02 :
But you’re very, very close to it.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, the dragonfly was suggested to me by our assistant producer, Nicole, because I was begging for help.
SPEAKER 03 :
She knows a lot about Doug. No, I mean Bugs.
SPEAKER 05 :
So, I missed that. I heard the cheering, Fred, but I didn’t know if that was because Dr. Dykstra made a better joke than me.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, according to my research, the fastest flying insect is the dragonfly. Oh, it’s the dragonfly, huh?
SPEAKER 02 :
It is. Oh, I would disagree with that.
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, wait, we have an entomologist disagreeing.
SPEAKER 02 :
All right. I was told by the policeman, you know, whom I know very well, first name basis, and I will tell you how I know that, that the botflies, I think the botflies are faster than the dragonflies. Now, They don’t have the maneuvering of the dragonflies. The dragonflies can stop, just stop, go right, go left. They can go backwards. The only insect that can go backwards. So no other insect can do that. And they have incredible maneuverability. But I think the botflies, I could be wrong on this, are probably faster than the dragonflies.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s my best guess. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard of a botfly.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I think there could be significant interest in arranging some sort of contest between a bot fly and a dragon fly.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you know, earlier in the show, I almost had a Freudian slip. I was reading the notes, and I was going to ask about plant-eating bugs, but I almost got it backwards. So what’s a bug-eating plant?
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, there are several. The most common one is the Venus flytrap. yeah yeah those are great everyone understands about that but there are other plants out there that eat bugs they just don’t do so in such a dramatic way as the venus flytrap so the sundew plant has a way of uh they have sticky substances and then once the insect gets caught you will actually see the leaf start to bend over very very slowly on the insect who can’t escape because it’s a sticky mess the venus flytrap is more of a A clapping motion. We love watching that. I could spend hours looking at YouTube videos with Venus fly traps, catching everything from wasps to centipedes to insects. And so it’s all a good time. It’s all a good time.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, before we move on to the next question, you mentioned microbes bringing nutrients to plants. And so in my mind, microbes are technically bugs, at least in my mind. And you’d be wrong, but go ahead. Okay, that helps. You can buzz me if you want there, Fred. So what’s the difference between a microbe and an insect then?
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, well insects have six legs. This is often how they’re defined. Insects have six legs. They have jointed appendages. They have a pair of antennae. This is kind of what characterizes insects. Microbes don’t have proper antennae. They do have biological antennae, I would argue, but that’s That’s a story for a different, you know, Real Science Radio episode completely because there are many different ways to detect fields. So microbes don’t have six legs. They don’t have the antenna. They don’t have jointed appendages. They’re usually small, amorphous. Sometimes they have shape associated with them like the paramecium. Sometimes they don’t like the amoeba. And so they just kind of move around the soil. They’ve got different roles that they do. And there’s a lot of bacteria around. And those are even smaller than some of the protozoa that I just mentioned. And it is these bacteria, microbes, that are working with the plant usually found in association with the root. And you just had an aha moment because I saw your finger go up, Doug. So I don’t know exactly what that means, but I should probably shut up and allow you to elaborate.
SPEAKER 03 :
That was the index finger for our radio audience.
SPEAKER 05 :
Okay. Oh, and by the way, for our radio audience and for our audience, for those of you who matriculated in the government schools, olfaction means smelling. I don’t want people to remain confused about it. We’ve got people trying to look that up. But my aha moment was that you’ve elucidated the source of my confusion, and it’s bacteria. Because I get sick, I’ve got a bacteria. I’ve got a bug. But that’s not the same as an insect kind of bug. That’s a different kind of bug. But we tend to call them all bugs.
SPEAKER 02 :
We do.
SPEAKER 05 :
But being an entomologist, you know there’s a difference.
SPEAKER 02 :
I’m held to a higher standard. You are not, Doug.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s right. Okay, now, so we talked a little bit about the controversy around insect olfaction, and you stated your position. I want to talk about pest control and pesticides. Okay. Have I been lied to that pesticides changed farming for the better in the early 20th century? And pesticides are what have enabled the global, the massive increase in the availability of food around the world, which cannot be denied. 200 years ago, there were a lot more people starving than there are now. And I’ve been told that it’s because of pesticide and modern farming techniques. techniques. And so can you tell me if that’s true?
SPEAKER 02 :
I’ve been told the same thing. So I would agree with that. However, when you are protecting an unhealthy plant with these pesticides, you are doing the plant a disservice and you are doing the human who might be eating that plant a disservice as well. What that means, if you’re kind of following the direction I’m going in right now, that if we are eating unhealthy food we are going to get sick more often we are going to have more disease we are going to have it can it can range from more colds more flu can be of course cancer and other things like this which have been associated with certain pesticides as well so I would argue that okay we may be feeding more of the world because we have more dense crops and we have more food there’s no question about it but this food is not healthy and that if you start eating healthy food your appetite will go down meaning you will eat less food. So if you are getting nutrient, if your food is not nutrient dense, what will happen then is that you will keep eating and you will require, the body will require certain nutrients and you will get it by demanding those foods. So there are a lot of sugar-based foods where you will find a lot of nutrients that are dissolved. in water the water-based nutrients are found and you will usually want something sugary like an apple or an orange if you want a fat-based nutrient such as vitamins a and d you will go after something fat so we have a desire to eat sugary foods we have a desire to eat fatty foods and this is in part in order to give us the nutrients that our body needs but if we bypass that mechanism we can so we realize that we’re short some water-soluble nutrients we go for a candy bar so we eat the candy bar our taste buds are telling us this is really sweet this is good I like this then by the time it gets down to our stomach and a few hours later we realize that it’s not giving us the nutrition that it needs and we start to get hungry again and we may either want another candy bar or we may want some nutritious food and that’s where some other problem comes in because when you’re eating healthy food you are requiring less as you should and the same thing goes for a plant a plant will not be requiring as much food. It won’t have to go through as much trouble if the microbes are working in conjunction with it. How am I doing so far, Doug?
SPEAKER 05 :
Wow, that’s enlightening. So it could be that modern farming techniques are a big part of why we can feed the world. I think it also has to do with the global dominance of Christian liberty in the Western world that has become kind of the global standard that there’s just more liberty and there’s less tyranny. And I think that has a lot to do with feeding the world as well. But now that we’ve mechanized farming to the point where we can feed the world and even have a lot left over, Perhaps we’ve reached a time when it would be appropriate now to improve our farming techniques to improve the quality of the food. We’ve got the quantity. Now can we improve the quality?
SPEAKER 02 :
I love the way you’re thinking. This has been brought up before. It is a great way of thinking, Doug. So I’m just going to congratulate you. I’m going to pat you on the back right now. You are truly much smarter than you look. So I appreciate that fact. As far as this is concerned, I wanted to go back and tell you, yes, did you know that farmers are being paid not to farm?
SPEAKER 05 :
Oh, I believe me.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah. So, yeah, we do have too much that is out there right now. So when you have a farmer who wants to farm but he’s being paid not to farm, that gives you an idea that we have a massive amount of food out there. We do have distribution problems. That’s certainly part of it. And then when we go to some of the third world countries, we are telling them that they cannot raise food that will give them the nutrition that they need. that they have to protect their food with fungicides, herbicides, insecticides and things like that and then problems result and it is more likely to starve to death when you don’t have the nutrients. You can actually survive on relatively smaller amount of food as long as the nutrition is getting inside of you and that would go to a great way in helping to reduce, I would say, hunger. I’m talking about true hunger now. I’m just not talking about calories, which often people think about when they think of hunger. I’m talking about you get hungry because you want certain nutrients to be satisfied. So if you’re short the fat-soluble vitamins, you will want a fatty food. And if you’re short the water-soluble vitamins, you will usually want those. And this is why our taste buds are uniquely different. attuned to fatty foods and sugary foods. Those are the things that we require more than anything else. And if we deny fatty foods and sugary foods, we immediately run into some kind of trouble. But this is why, I mean, look at the snacks that are out there. They go after two things, our sweet tooth and our desire to have fats. That’s what our snack food does, but they don’t have the nutrients in them. And therefore we’re now bypassing the mechanism. People get hungry and then they eat more and they’re eating more because they’re starving to death because their nutritional makeup is not the way that it should be. And of course this has to do with weight gain. Did you know too that weight gain is attributed in no small part to the fats? If you don’t have the fat soluble vitamins, you will get more fat. And this will allow you to store the fat soluble vitamins. So if you’re starving of these fat soluble vitamins, you’ll put on weight so that the body can efficiently store these fat soluble vitamins. So we know that insects do this. and we also know that all other animals do it as well and so these I don’t think I’m blowing your mind right now but I’m just trying to to introduce some common sense as to how nutrition is understood whether it be from a microbe whether it be from an insect and even if I may go all the way to a human being wow so would you recommend fat soluble vitamin supplements each day sounds like that would help promote not eating as much am i hearing uh i mean to a certain extent you’re correct and i do take vitamins because i know that my food is not as nutrient dense as it should be however i also know and other people will tell you that too is that you don’t very efficiently absorb these fat soluble or water soluble vitamins because of that It is always better to get it in your food. I just wish that the food was better so that I could revert to that because it’s true. We didn’t have vitamins. 2,000, 3,000 years ago. We didn’t have the pesticides, we didn’t have the vitamins, but now based upon the new way of doing things, the vitamins become a little bit more important. So even if I’m pulling in 20%, 10%, 5% of the nutrients from the vitamins that I take, I consider this to be valuable enough in order to continue taking vitamins during the day because I know that my food is not going to give me the nutrients that I need.
SPEAKER 03 :
Okay, so follow on then. As you were talking about all this, there’s this thing with organic foods when you go shopping, King Soopers or whatever. Is there value in actually picking the organic food? I mean, I’ve kind of ignored it. And I’ve seen studies, maybe one, where it said there’s really not that big of a difference. But I don’t know, maybe there is. What’s your opinion on organic foods?
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah my opinion on organic food is that it can be just as unhealthy as conventionally raised pesticide food but oftentimes it’s not and so when I’m getting organic food and I try to get that when I can although there’s not a lot to choose from usually I would have to put the seed in the ground myself and then just you know eat the plants that I make on my five acre property so because of that that’s probably a better way to go but if I get food from the store, I realized that’s going to be some problems with it. And so therefore the supplementation comes in and I understand that this is where some people are going. This is where I’m going right now. I’m sorry. What was your question again, Fred? I think I just diverged.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, no, it was pretty close. It was about organic foods, you know, because everybody has a big organic food.
SPEAKER 02 :
I try to get organic because you know, when you get organic, you’re not getting the pesticides. So if you’re getting pesticides into your body, you will have to excrete them. And that is going to take energy. So you’re going to have to produce the esterases. You’re going to have to produce the P450s. You’re going to have to produce the glutathione S-transferases. Those are all the detoxification enzymes and there’s a whole bunch of them in each of those three main groups. And in order to produce those detoxification enzymes, you have to use energy. in order to make them meaning if you continually eat pesticides this is going to lower your energy levels and so that’s why i try to avoid conventionally raised if i can so organic is usually better not always that’s why i measure it because i’ve read i’ve tested organic crap before and i realize this is a family show and i hope i’m not going to be bleeped out of this i don’t know maybe i am Is that going to be included in there or am I going to be excluded?
SPEAKER 05 :
No, no, that’s an accurate description.
SPEAKER 02 :
We’re good. Okay, so because of this, if there’s conventional crap that’s out there and I don’t want to eat it, if there’s organic crap, I don’t want to eat it.
SPEAKER 01 :
Stop the tape. Stop the tape. Hey, this is Dominic Enyart. We are out of time for today. If you want to hear the rest of this program, go to rsr.org. That’s Real Science Radio, rsr.org.
SPEAKER 04 :
Scholars can’t explain it all away Get ready to be awed By the handiwork of God To tune into real science radio Turn up the real science radio Keeping it real That’s what I’m talking about
