| Recently, California passed a law protecting farmers who have GMOs drift from another field onto theirs, contaminating their crops. Now, Jacobs Farm won a victory in court over a similar matter: pesticide drift. Jacobs Farm grew organic dill, rosemary, and sage, which were contaminated when a company called Western Farm Service, Inc sprayed pesticides nearby.
Jacobs Farm was following the organic rules, so why should they be punished when some bonehead next door sprayed organophosphates (chlorpyrifos, diazinon and dimethoate) that drifted onto their crops?
Even the trace presence of the pesticides made it impossible for Jacobs Farm to sell significant portions of its 2006 and 2007 harvests from its farm.
Fortunately, the jury decided that Jacobs Farm should not have to suffer losses imposed by the pesticide spraying assholes next door, and the company that sprayed now owes them $1 million. |
This case sets a fantastic precedent! Let's hope it protects any organic farmers who have the same problem in the future.
The landmark ruling sends a clear message to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) that pesticides that evaporate and move to non-target property with wind or fog need to be strictly regulated to prevent future property damage. Neither DPR nor US EPA specifically regulate this type of pesticide drift, although California regulations clearly prohibit off-site airborne pesticide movement that causes crop damage.
Larry Jacobs of Jacobs Farms had a great quote buried in the middle of the article:
"Growing practices that do not rely on toxic chemicals already exist. We need to implement these approaches and work on expanding the toolbox so that farmers have more non-toxic options for crop production."
He continues:
"The scientific community's growing knowledge of how these chemicals move in the environment after application was not considered by pesticide applicators or government regulators," continued Jacobs. "Regulations prohibiting the continued application of pesticides that damage crops on other farms are in place. But until now, these prohibitions did not apply to damage from pesticides when they evaporate after they are applied."
Honestly, I wonder what the hell people are doing using these pesticides in the first place. So many of them were developed in post World War I efforts to find deadly gasses to use in war. They tested these poisons on bugs to see if they would be deadly to people. And they often ARE deadly (or, at lower doses, merely harmful) to people. From the Wikipedia page on Diazinon:
The symptoms associated with diazinon poisoning in humans include weakness, headaches, tightness in the chest, blurred vision, nonreactive pinpoint pupils, excessive salivation, sweating, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and slurred speech.
Additionally, they don't work too well against pests. Yes, they work initially. They wipe everything out as they are designed to do. But nature abhors a vacuum. New critters move in once the old ones are wiped out. When biodiversity gets destroyed and you have fewer species living in a habitat, then those species are subject to major fluctuations. What does that mean? Well, you've just opened yourself up to major pest infestations, whereas when you have biodiversity, all of the other competing species keep the pest species in check. |
