State’s Farmers Reap Added Work in New Pesticide-Use Reports

California farmers who complain now about being buried under paper work are going to find their record-keeping increasing considerably when the new year begins.

Every application of each type of pesticide or herbicide registered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency will have to be documented in a monthly report to the county agricultural commissioner, the local arm of the state Department of Food and Agriculture, which will compile the statistics statewide.

Before chemicals are sprayed, a grower will have to get an identification number from the agricultural commissioner. The grower then will have to present that number to chemical dealers when buying pesticides.

This new reporting system is not a plot fomented by an anti-agriculture group but was sponsored by a legislator from the heart of the state’s farm belt. Assemblyman Bruce Bronzan (D-Fresno) said he carried the legislation at the request of farmers who feared that more radical restrictions would be enacted either by the Legislature or by voters through an initiative.

“This area is so greatly polarized, it was impossible to get everybody to agree,” Bronzan said at a seminar sponsored by Fresno State’s California Agricultural Technology Institute and the Bank of America.

“Some in agriculture feel over-regulation now is an extremely onerous situation and they don’t want any more. On the other hand, there are those who think all chemicals everywhere should be banned--no use of pesticides to grow foodstuffs at any time.”

Bronzan said health officials and some environmental groups were able to agree with farmers on his bill, including full pesticide reporting, a requirement that previously only applied to licensed pesticide-control advisers, not farmers.

“This will enable us for the first time to know what is happening on virtually every acre in California,” Bronzan said. “It is a protection (for farmers) because you will know what took place.”

Supporters in the farm community consider complete reporting of all use of pesticides a way to provide accurate answers to people’s worries about food safety.

“Our critics have often charged that we are using the maximum allowable amounts of chemicals on our crops,” California Farm Bureau President Bob Vice said at that group’s annual meeting. “The data collected . . . will help us refute wild claims that exaggerate pesticide use in California.”

To Kings County farmer Jim Verboon, the new law “seems like a lot of red tape and more bookkeeping.” But, he added, “we have to prove our case beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

Ironically, neither the new law nor any old ones require homeowners to register or report the pesticides they use in their gardens and flower beds.

Bronzan’s bill does more than just require farmers to report every pesticide application.

For the first time, processed food in California will be tested, and the number of tests of unprocessed food will be doubled.

The state agriculture and health departments will develop pesticide-tolerance standards tied to dietary risk. They will be able to quickly halt or modify use of any pesticide that is considered to pose a dietary risk as a result of that assessment.

Finally, $1 million will be allocated annually to pay for increased studies of alternative ways to control bugs, such as integrated pest management, in the hope that additional methods can be found to reduce use of chemicals.

“The question is, how are we going to use less pesticides in the future?” Bronzan said. “The issue is, is agriculture going to be in the lead in doing that so something rational comes out?”