Showing posts with label pesticides. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pesticides. Show all posts
3/17/2010
12/30/2009
12/19/2009
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]
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]
11/26/2009
Syngenta Goes on the Attack
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/11/25-7 [Agribusiness on the attack means they're feeling threatened. So this is good news, Folks! Happy organic Thanksgiving to you!]
9/04/2009
What We Know About Disappearing Bees
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/02/saving-bees-what-we-know-now/
8/19/2009
Dow's New Pesticide
Dow Chemicals is pitching a new pesticide that also happens to be an extraordinarily potent greenhouse gas, 4,780 times more potent than carbon dioxide. A group of scientists and advocates have organized to attempt to block the request from Dow AgroSciences to use the pesticide sulfuryl fluoride on farm fields in four states.
http://www.greenmuze.com/climate/heat/1302-dows-potent-ghg-pesticide-.html
http://www.greenmuze.com/climate/heat/1302-dows-potent-ghg-pesticide-.html
8/18/2009
6/06/2009
5/23/2009
5/05/2009
4/27/2009
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
4/23/2009
4/03/2009
Cotton, World's Dirtiest Crop
Cotton is "the world's dirtiest crop": The Deadly Chemicals in Cotton, a joint report by Pesticide Action Network UK and the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), notes that $2 billion worth of chemicals are used on the world's cotton fields every year and "cotton is responsible for the release of 16% of global insecticides."
The World Health Organization classifies the cotton pesticide aldicarb as "extremely hazardous" while the joint report calls the organochlorine pesticide endosulfan "the most important source of fatal poisoning among cotton farmers in West Africa." Cotton chemicals also pose a major health risk to workers and children in Uzbekistan, India and other high-production countries. EJF's "White Gold- The True Cost of Cotton" about cotton's impacts in Uzbekistan won the Environmental Activism & Social Justice Award at the 9th Annual Earth Vision International Environmental Film Festival in Santa Cruz, CA this month.
The World Health Organization classifies the cotton pesticide aldicarb as "extremely hazardous" while the joint report calls the organochlorine pesticide endosulfan "the most important source of fatal poisoning among cotton farmers in West Africa." Cotton chemicals also pose a major health risk to workers and children in Uzbekistan, India and other high-production countries. EJF's "White Gold- The True Cost of Cotton" about cotton's impacts in Uzbekistan won the Environmental Activism & Social Justice Award at the 9th Annual Earth Vision International Environmental Film Festival in Santa Cruz, CA this month.
3/19/2009
Please Don't Kill My Bees
http://www.chelseagreen.com/content/value-your-neighborhood-bees-and-fight-colony-collapse-disorder/
3/17/2009
2/16/2009
Bridge to an Organic Future Forum, Carrboro, April
Bridge to an Organic Future: Opportunities for health and the environment, the 27th National Pesticide Forum, will be held April 3-4, 2009 at the Century Center in Carrboro, NC.
This national environmental conference, convened by Beyond Pesticides and Toxic Free NC, will cover a range of issues affecting NC and the nation including: fair, organic food; pesticides and health; clean water; organic lawns; schools and daycare; and more. Keynote speakers include: Jim Hightower, author and radio commentator; Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee; and, Philip and Alice Shabecoff, authors of Poisoned Profits.
Registration and more information online at www.beyondpesticides.org/forum. Carolina Farm Stewardship Association is co-sponsoring this event.
This national environmental conference, convened by Beyond Pesticides and Toxic Free NC, will cover a range of issues affecting NC and the nation including: fair, organic food; pesticides and health; clean water; organic lawns; schools and daycare; and more. Keynote speakers include: Jim Hightower, author and radio commentator; Baldemar Velasquez, president of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee; and, Philip and Alice Shabecoff, authors of Poisoned Profits.
Registration and more information online at www.beyondpesticides.org/forum. Carolina Farm Stewardship Association is co-sponsoring this event.
11/22/2008
10/06/2008
Fire Ant Management, Oct. 15
NC Cooperative Extension in Chatham County will offer a program on fire ant management on Wednesday, October 15, 2008. There is no charge for the program that begins at 7:00 p.m. in the Agriculture Building in downtown Pittsboro. Participants are required to call 919.542.8202 to pre-register for limited seating no later than October 13, 2008. Extension Agents Al Cooke and Sam Groce will conduct the program. Cooke reports that calls have been coming in from "all over the county" about how to control fire ants. He emphasizes that many available products can be used to manage fire ants, "but how those products are used is more important." Neither Cooke nor Groce will promise that you will eliminate fire ants. Their presentation will focus on understanding the life within a fire ant mound and using the ants' habits to our advantage. They will present strategies recognized as effective for dealing with fire ant mounds along with their advantages and disadvantages. As a livestock Agent, Groce points out that there are very few products that can be used in pastures or forage crops. "This is both a safety and a legal issue. It is a violation of Federal law to use pesticides in a location not specified on the label." Both Agents agree that fall is an excellent time for treating fire ant mounds. "Ants are actively foraging in the fall. If we can reduce the numbers now, there may be fewer queens mating and establishing new mounds next year." Pesticide Recertification credit has been approved for 2 hours credit in the categories of G, H, I, K, L, N, O, D, X. The credits for this class will be awarded for the year 2009 on your license. The program is appropriate for both professionals and non-professionals. Seating will be limited for the program. Participants are required to call 919.542.8202 or e-mail jane_tripp@ncsu.edu to pre-register no later than October 13, 2008.
Debbie Roos
Agriculture Agent
Chatham County Center
N.C. Cooperative Extension
919.542.8202
Debbie_Roos@ncsu.eduwww.growingsmallfarms.org
Debbie Roos
Agriculture Agent
Chatham County Center
N.C. Cooperative Extension
919.542.8202
Debbie_Roos@ncsu.eduwww.growingsmallfarms.org
6/02/2008
5/25/2008
Pesticides Banned for Bees
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/23/wildlife.endangeredspecies
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