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In an interview appearing in the January Farm Bureau newsletter, our Agricultural Commissioner Steve Hajik commented on new regulations from the state regarding the application of dormant sprays. It seems the state is wanting to better regulate ag runoff because it is ending in the Sacramento River. The new regulation has several conditions that need to be met before dormant sprays can be applied.
"The problem is, we don't know when you're going to be applying it and I don't see us going from place to place to examine the soil moisture," Hajik said to the growers. "So, I don't see how I'm going to be able to enforce this." (as reported in www.lakeconews.com.
Those of us in the online community have been mulling over this and other statements for the past week. I wanted to jump into the mix because I'm concerned that the farmers who have replied on this issue don't seem to be getting the source of concern: that our ag commissioner has said that the new regulation is unenforceable.
Industry needs to monitor itself. When it can't (or won't), government gets involved. It seems the farming industry has not regulated itself. Organophosphates and pyrethroids are ending up downstream. The state seems to think it comes from pesticide applications to ag - why else would a new regulation come down the pike about dormant applications?
All well and good except the chief enforcer in our county happened to believe that because of the nature of the regulation, he and his staff would not be able to enforce the new law. It appears that the state made this new reg without consulting ag or else the state would have heard the concerns of people such as Steve Hajik and given clarification before the law went into effect. It must have come as a surprise. Whatever.
This is not good. A law came into being to protect health and the environment. As citizens of the county, we are supposed to have a government that upholds the laws. Steve's admission that the new regulation was unenforceable could only mean one thing: that the Lake County Department of Agriculture is not up to the task of enforcing the federal and state laws which are enacted to protect our health and the environment. For tribes, it could be an even greater concern because some of them practice a subsistence level lifestyle which of course means they are consuming less from grocery stores and restaurants and
more from hunting, gathering and fishing.
There are many of us in this county that are counting on farmers to get out of the trap of pesticides and start practicing a sustainable agriculture which does no harm to the environment, the residents or the tourists either.
It appears to us nonfarmers that the cultural practices have killed the soils, encouraged pests and destroyed the natural predators as well as the natural defenses of the plants. In addition, these cultural practices have lead to a contamination of our soils, earth and water and have caused an unknown number of illnesses. This is not acceptable.
I don't think anyone wants to see Lake County agriculture disappear, but I think more and more people are finding that the cost has become too high for comfort. We don't know the full extent of the damage.
How can we support more farmers to move toward and then past ipm? Are more subsidies needed? More partnerships? How can we encourage them to not hide behind ag exemptions but see their responsibility toward our environment? This conversation needs to occur.
Sarah Ryan
Environmental Director Big Valley Rancheria Lakeport
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So what you get is at least 30% more spraying than is nessesary, that's what's wasted outright. But here's a even more important point: all three main Lake County crops are being grown quite successfully organicly, and there is no need for many of the harsh and expensive pesticides at all! I know this from working for many years here in organic vineyards and orchards, there is no debating the fact that organic production of winegrapes, pears and walnuts here is totally viable and that only stubborness and outright stupidity is the only thing stopping it from being the norm.
What can get you into trouble is spraying dormant oil when the ground is saturated and a storm is coming, that's what creates a possible runoff problem. A lot of dormant spraying is not done at the optimum time because one worker and one tractor/sprayer generally have several orchards to do in a certain time frame, which means some will get sprayed too early or too late in the day (when it's too cool to get the target pests in an active/vunerable state). Dormant oil is a contact pesticde, it pretty much has to hit the pest directly for it's mode of action to work (suffocation).
This is why small operations are the best, because the grower can time the spraying for the best time of day, usually the bigger the outfit the more poorly-timed spraying you'll see from them-so much for the economy of scale! But dormant oils and pyrethroids/organosphosphates are a whole different deal, the latter are rarely sprayed in the dormant stage, but are used during the sometimes wet Springtime-when there could be runoff. That still doesn't explain why the state came up,with this new law (which is as dumb as Hajik says it is), since apparently oil runoff isn't an issue and the soil moisture content measurement deal is so subjective and hit-or miss it's totally useless. You could test my orchard in three different places and get three wildly different results, and that's not unusual here given the varied nature of soil types in the Big Valley.
This is how dumb the state is: They register me as organic and I'm certified by a private orginization as well, which means every year they check to make sure I have no erosion or runoff AT ALL! Zero! All organic materials used. But then the state says I have to join the Farm Bureau and a watershed group ($200-per-year) to moniter the pesticide runoff I COULDN'T HAVE TO GET CERTFIED IN THE FIRST PLACE! You pay to prove you don't pollute, and then pay again to prove the impossible didn't happen.