Death to Your Garden

Contaminated Compost: Coming Soon to a Store Near You
9/4/2009
By Barbara Pleasant

In Santa Rosa, Calif., the folks at Grab n’ Grow have been making compost and planting mixes for 25 years, using organic materials generated in Sonoma County. In 2002, the company detected residues of a potent herbicide called clopyralid in a batch of compost. The next year, Grab n’ Grow manager Don Liepold and his wife saw the herbicide’s trail of destruction in their raised bed organic garden — lettuce that refused to grow, curled and wilted peas, and stunted, gnarled tomato leaves.

As we reported in July 2009, clopyralid and its close cousin, aminopyralid, easily persist, sometimes for YEARS!, in hay, manure and compost. When contaminated materials are used in food gardens, tomatoes, beans and other sensitive crops develop curled foliage that looks like a disease, if they grow at all.

Both herbicides are manufactured by DowAgrosciences, which seems to have no moral or ethical problem selling products which clearly are polluting the public compost stream. Meanwhile, aminopyralid pesticides have been pulled from shelves in the United Kingdom. Liepold, the Rachel Carson Council and MOTHER EARTH NEWS think the U.S. EPA should take the same action here.

“I have been testing and detecting herbicide residues and thus rejecting cow manure, horse manure, turkey mulch, rice hulls, mushroom compost and yard trimmings,” says Grab n’ Grow manager Don Liepold. “I spent $20,000 in lab fees in 2008, and am on the same track for 2009,” he says.

It is extremely difficult to keep contaminated materials out of commercial compost. “One load of contaminated grass clipplings can ruin a batch of compost,” says Eric Philip of Anatek Labs in Moscow, Idaho. Philip has seen so many positive tests for clopyralid residues in compost that he would not use untested compost in his own garden.

“When folks have plants die in their home gardens, their first assumption is that they did something wrong,” Philip says. But with pyralid-laced commercial compost becoming more common, contaminated soil amendments are often to blame.

The source of pyralid pollution can be impossible to trace. For example, a horse stable may use hay brought in from a neighboring state, without knowing that it is laced with pyralid herbicides. If the horse’s manure or stable litter ends up in a garden, disaster is ready to strike. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Liepold stopped making one of Grab n’ Grow’s most popular products, Mango Mulch, for more than a year because he could not find an uncontaminated manure supply. Now he’s getting it from two local organic dairies.

Testing for contamination is a slow, painstaking process that comes at a steep price of $350 (or more) per sample, so most commercially-made compost is not tested.

Both of these herbicides were approved by the EPA before their persistence in compost was known, and before lab tests existed that could detect residues at damaging levels. We think approval of these pesticides should be revoked before the damage gets worse.

To express your concern about this hidden danger to your garden, write to your senators and congressional representatives to make your voice heard. You can also contact Rick Keigwin, director of the EPA’s pesticide review division.

See our earlier report: Milestone Herbicide Creates Killer Compost for lots more background on this issue. [Mother Earth News]

Dangers in Roundup

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=weed-whacking-herbicide-p&print=true.edu

How Green Is Golf?

http://www.golfdigest.com/magazine/2008/05/environment_intro

Killer Compost, Orange County

Killer Compost Surfaces in Orange County, North Carolina

Please find information below about Aminopyralid which has turned up in our Mt Sinai Road property and is affecting two other local farmers who source toxic manure in the last four weeks. Here is detail about Forefront that is the Dow Chemical program that was used by an Orange County haymaker and was sold to a local horse breeder who delivered one year old horse manure well-composted to us. The herbicide is pernicious and persistent and is killing our broadleaf plants, and soil remediation is problematic. Here are some details to share:

Aminopyralid has caused problems in gardens in the UK last year and Dow amended their label recommendation to try to eliminate the problem.

Basically the herbicide is used in pastures because it kills thistles, clover and many other dicot weeds. It is very selective to the grass. It has a long half life - 533 days has been reported. It is also very active on leguminous, solanaceous and sunflower crops. A major problem is that the chemicals absorbed to lignins in grass cell walls. It is then released if that grass is digested by a horse or cow. So the manure may influence the growth of sensitive crops, especially if that manure is not well rotted down for a year or more.

If you have the problem there are probably a couple of things to consider.

I would not replant with a sensitive crop this year. Rotavate the soil and plant a non sensitive food or cover crop. I would recommend not returning harvested material as mulch, although the residue levels may be really low. So if you grow a cover crop, mow it off when mature and compost it separately or dispose elsewhere (landfill?).

I think if the area has been well rotovated and keeps moist, you should not have a problem next year; stuff breaks down fast in North Carolina.

Interrogate the compost supplier on his source of manure and ensure he is aware of the issue.

Lobby that EPA withdraws this use of the product and that Dow modifies its label. Cattle farmers love the product and vegetable producers hate it.

We Must Change Our Lives

Of the ten calories of fossil fuels necessary to provide one calorie of food energy, about 40% is used for fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides and herbicides, about 23% for processing and packaging and about 32% in home refrigeration/freezing and cooking. Pat Murphy

Good Article on Honey Bee Troubles

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/02/9365/

To Rain On Our V-Parade

Valentine’s Day:
Labor Conditions at US-Owned Plantations Show Hidden Realities of Flower Industry

Chocolate, flowers, diamonds. How can gifts that bring so much happiness have come from so much pain? We begin our coverage with a look at the flower industry. Nora Ferm of the International Labor Rights Fund talks about a new report on labor conditions at US-owned flower plantations in Colombia and Ecuador. We’re also joined by Beatriz Fuentes, President of the Sintrasplendor Union at Dole’s largest flower plantation in Colombia, which has become the site of a growing worker’s struggle. Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/14/1646235