It is not just the insects that are in serious decline, but also the entomologists who study them (Plummeting insect numbers threaten collapse of nature, 11 February), both in terms of promoting and conserving beneficial species and combating pests. In 2016, I had an article published in the scientific literature entitled Insect biology – a vulnerable discipline?, highlighting the good that insects do as well as the bad, and how necessary research is on insects, but also how this has been eroded for many years by reductions in both government and industrial funding.

For example, Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire, where I spent most of my career, used to have a thriving entomological research community working on various aspects concerning the role of insects in the agroecosystem. However, especially since the early years of this century, most of this vital work has been terminated due to severe cutbacks in funding, with very few projects surviving. In my view, considering the importance of insects as described in your article, renewed funding is urgently required to continue such essential exploration of insect science in all its diversity.

Hugh Loxdale

Honorary visiting professor, School of Biosciences, University of Cardiff

• A stark warning has again been issued by scientists over the catastrophic damage that intensive chemical farming and the use of agricultural pesticides is doing to wildlife, insects, nature and the environment. Not only that but these highly toxic agrochemicals are already known to be causing devastating damage to the health and lives of rural residents and communities around the world, as pesticides have been associated with a catalogue of chronic health conditions including neurological diseases, various cancers, respiratory problems and others.

Pesticides are poisons and should never have been used in the production of food in the first place, and certainly not for spraying where people live and breathe, especially babies, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and people already ill and/or disabled. A vital amendment to the agriculture bill has recently been tabled by Caroline Lucas for the prohibition of agricultural pesticides near residents’ homes, schools, nurseries, and hospitals, among other areas. Now is the time for MPs – especially those in rural constituencies – to also sign up to and support this crucial amendment.

Removing toxic chemicals completely from food production would protect not only the health of rural residents and communities, as well as other members of the public, but also the environment, wildlife, pollinators, and other species that – as the new global scientific review has rightly identified – are being wiped out from the continued use of such toxic chemicals.

Georgina Downs

UK Pesticides Campaign, Chichester, West Sussex

• Stating that the rate of extinction of insects is eight times faster than that of mammals, birds and reptiles is highly misleading. I have shown the rate of extinction of many insect groups is remarkably close to that of terrestrial vertebrates, at least for areas and insects for which we have good data. Indeed, birds may be the best indicators of rates of terrestrial species extinction overall – enabling rapid assessment of priority areas.

Population loss, which is what you are describing, is of less concern than extinction, because extinction cannot be reversed. Fortunately, population loss can sometimes be reversed – particularly by rewilding. Moreover, some of the reported population “collapses” are disputable, as in Puerto Rico, because they confound insect abundance with reduced activity. It can be argued we are in a mass extinction event – but not on this evidence.

Clive Hambler

Lecturer in biological and human sciences, Hertford College, University of Oxford

• Your excellent editorial (A silent global catastrophe is under way among the insects all other life needs, 12 February) alerts us to this looming catastrophe. But you let us off the hook by suggesting that change relies on individual actions. These are not enough. The crisis needs more than this from us. We need to act together as warriors for a humanity threatened by gathering climate breakdown. Everything needs to change, as Naomi Klein spells out so brilliantly in This Changes Everything. We should eat organic food, of course, but also join a movement like Extinction Rebellion and harass our MPs to take the planet seriously.

Alastair Sawday

Publisher, Bristol

• Your two editorials of 12 February expose the, perhaps insurmountable, problem in addressing the environmental catastrophes we face. The first editorial demanded policies to create more economic growth, ie more consumption, while the second stated a few paragraphs later that “we must consume less in every way”. No one seems to have noticed the blatant contradiction. It is a contradiction fundamental to all attempts by our current economic and social systems to address the existential ecological crisis confronting humanity.

Stephen Smith

Glasgow

• If that innocent cow pictured in your article on insect decline had been an organic creature, she would have been outside eating grass, feeding myriad insects on her blood and cowpats. In turn swallows and swifts would be feeding on the same insects. If grazing animals are banished from fields and moorlands and mountains, the insects will never survive the predations wrought on them by pesticides in the arable fields. The answer is of course organic mixed farming. Crops in this system are grown without artificial fertilisers derived from petrochemicals but depend on healthy and vigorous soil nourished by animal manure. Growing strong on this, in a proper rotation, they resist insect damage.

Penelope Reid

Wantage, Oxfordshire

• Many of us Scots are hoping, always hoping, that the female highland midge will become extinct in Scotland.

Alistair Cant

Edinburgh

• Join the debate – email guardian.letters@theguardian.com

• Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu.com/letters

• Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition