Pesticide Potpourri

• The UF/IFAS Plant Medicine Program is actively engaged in conducting trials designed to provide initial investigative data regarding pest management tools such as chemical control, alternative control methods, and varietal resistance.  These data are used to develop more effective and cost-efficient methods of dealing with plant pests while providing Doctor of Plant Medicine students a supervised opportunity to design and implement research trials.  Research is performed in the program’s new laboratory, in the greenhouse, or at the UF/IFAS Plant Science Research and Education Unit in Citra.  Florida’s unique weather conditions are conducive to year around or seasonal trials and trials investigating temperature (heat or cold) stress or heavy pest pressures. Please visit http://dpm.ifas.ufl.edu/clinical_trials/index.shtml to see the list of past and current projects or to inquire about the trials program.
•  Sap-sucking whiteflies and the diseases they often spread cause some of the world's worst crop problems and are responsible for enormous losses every year.  An online resource has been developed and is now available to help growers afflicted by these pests.  USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in the agency's Subtropical Insects Research Unit (SIRU) - in collaboration with the University of Florida, the University of California, the University of Georgia, Texas A & M University and Cornell University, and endorsed by industry groups such as the Society of American Florists, American Nursery & Landscape Association and the IR-4 Project - have developed a website with extensive information about whitefly management.  Called "Management Program for Whiteflies on Propagated Ornamentals With an Emphasis on the Q-biotype," the comprehensive online resource can be accessed at: http://www.mrec.ifas.ufl.edu/LSO/bemisia/bemisia.htm.  Proper use of insecticides is important for whitefly management, particularly with respect to avoiding development of insecticide resistance in whiteflies.  The online guide recommends that insecticides be rotated between chemical classes and should be applied a minimum of two times, at a five- to seven-day interval, to allow for egg hatch between applications and ensure that adults, nymphs and newly hatched individuals are all killed.  (USDA ARS, 8/22/07). 

•  Dr. Joe Noling and Sherrie Buchanon generated buffer zone restriction maps based on EPA’s proposed fumigant buffer zones, some of which were as far as 0.9 mile.  They used high resolution aerial images and special ArcGIS software to generate buffer zone maps when buffer zones of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 1,000, 2,000, and 4,000 feet are overlaid on Hillsborough County acreage.  The loss of available acreage associated with these buffers is 7, 19, 26, 37, 48, 78, 98, and 100 percent, respectively.  The loss of revenue associated with this is 16, 34, 56, 81, 105, 170, 213, and 217 million dollars, respectively.  (August Berry/Vegetable Times). 

•  The United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO, and several other organizations have filed suit against the EPA in an attempt to get the agency to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos (Lorsban®).  Chlorpyrifos, which can be used only for agricultural purposes in the U.S., is used by farmers for treating pests on cotton, corn, almond, and fruit crops.  According to representatives from the United Farm Workers, the pesticide puts workers at risk of serious illness.  In July, 28 Tulare County, CA grape pickers were reportedly sickened when the pesticide drifted from a nearby almond orchard into the vineyard in which they were working.  An estimated 11 million pounds of chlorpyrifos is sprayed in the U.S. annually, 2 million pounds of which are sprayed in California.  Chlorpyrifos has been on the market for more than 40 years and is approved for sale in over 100 countries.  (CAL/OSHA Compliance Advisor, 8/8/07). 

•  Based on an EPA aerial applicator survey, average pilot age is about 60 and more than three-fourths of operators have 16-70 years of experience.  Ten to 15 years ago, there were around 4,000 crop-dusting pilots.  Today, that figure has declined by 20 percent.  New million-dollar planes that can fly farther and haul more chemicals have also priced some mom-and-pop operations out of the business.  Genetically modified crops are also cutting into business revenues in several states.  (AP, 9/4/07). 

•  Farmers across the United Kingdom are being urged to lobby politicians to vote against a set of far-reaching proposals that would place severe restrictions on the future use of pesticides.  The environment committee of the European Parliament has tabled an extended set of what were already onerous proposals intended to curb pesticide use across the EU by 2020.  The parliament’s agriculture and industry committees lodged more than 70 amendments, but the environment committee rejected them outright.  The latest version, which is likely to go before parliament for a vote in September, requires member states to draft a National Action Plan that would outline how pesticide use would be cut by 25 percent within five years and by 50 percent by 2020 and the plan should be funded by an industry levy or tax.  Additionally, barred applications on a 10-meter buffer zone alongside waterways, a central system for notifying neighbors and others that have requested to be notified of instances where they could be exposed to drift, a ban on spraying vertical crops (e.g. hops and orchards) alongside or near waterways and a 50 percent reduction in use of products considered of very high concern or classified as toxic or very toxic by 2013 are other goals of the plan.  (Farmer’s Weekly Interactive, 8/17/07). 

•  The European Commission was accused of a "grotesque" waste of taxpayers’ money after it allocated funding for Friends of the Earth Europe, which received 562,000 pounds from the EU Commission last year.  That increased by 200,000 this year in order to meet “increased running costs.”  The group has a 25-person staff in Brussels and receives about half of its budget from the Commission.  “There is something grotesque about millions of pounds being spent every year by the commission merely to fund groups to lobby it,” stated British environment minister Roger Helmer.  Anja Leetz, head of fundraising for Friends of the Earth Europe, rejected the criticism, saying: “There has to be some EU funding for groups like ours otherwise industry and big business would just have their own way.”  A commission spokesman said such funding helps “facilitate a full and frank” debate.  (8/21/07). 

•  Farmers across central Spain have witnessed a vole explosion, with animals numbering 750 million eating through the fields of Castilla-León, devouring crops, decimating local economies, and carrying disease.  While no one seems to know what caused the invasion, creative tactics to combat it are flourishing as farmers, frustrated with weak local response, take matters into their own hands.  Officials say some 260,000 hectares of land (1,000 square miles) have been affected, wreaking €30 million worth of damage.  Francisco Salvador, spokesperson for the Palencia branch of COAG, an organization for agricultural unions, was quoted as saying, “People are frightened.  If the voles are still there in a month, when we start planting, we don't know what we're going to eat.”  Juan José Luque, a biologist at the University of Valladolid, was quoted as saying, “Some of these species go through cycles where their population explodes.  It's our hypothesis that the confluence of one of those natural cycles with last year's mild winter played a role.”  (The Christian Science Monitor, 8/20/07). 

•  A Chinese newspaper reported that China will launch a campaign to crack down on the use of highly potent and poisonous pesticides which are banned but still in use, as fears persist over the country's food safety.  The paper noted that five pesticides were banned earlier this year, and the Agriculture Ministry was compiling a blacklist of companies still making them.  As part of the government's food safety strategy, it will educate farmers how to properly use pesticides.  China uses twice as much pesticide annually as is actually needed which has exacerbated the country's food safety problems.  (Reuters, 8/8/07). 

•  In Wisconsin, farmer Mark Hilgendorf uses standard pesticides and he sprays them on his cornfield only twice a year.  But a pesticide warning sign that he erected - tombstone-shaped, with a skull and crossbones at the top - has been up every day for the past three years, dead ahead of the entrance to an upscale subdivision that is being developed.  Hilgendorf stated that he posted the sign simply to notify the subdivision residents that he uses pesticides, adding, “I didn't need these people to complain.”  But some residents of Prairie Glen, where homes sell “from the $340s,” believe that the sign aims to scare people from moving in, or at least to irritate them.  Enough of them have complained to the subdivision's developer, Bielinski Homes of Waukesha, that the home builder is trying for a second time to get the sign removed.  Hilgendorf, 51, made news in 2002 when he parked a manure spreader in front of a "Welcome to Germantown" sign along Mequon Road north of what is now Prairie Glen.  He said he was upset that the village put the sign in a leased field that he farms.  (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/24/07). 

•  In Bangkok, eleven tons of papayas were dumped outside the Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry by Greenpeace in protest at the agency's move to lift a ban on open-field trials of genetically-modified crops.  Passers-by took matters into their own hands and ran off with the fruit.  Many, who mostly knew nothing about transgenic fruit, said they did not care about any health risks.  They were just thinking about how hungry they were.  (The Bangkok Post, 8/28/07).