Growers Fear Pesticide Controls in ‘Big Green’ : Agriculture: The initiative would severely cut crop yields, spokesmen tell a trade hearing. Environmentalists disagree.

The proposed pesticide crackdown in California’s “Big Green” ballot initiative would decimate the state’s agricultural industry, reducing crop yields and eliminating thousands of jobs, spokesmen for agricultural interests told the U.S. International Trade Commission on Tuesday.

The unremittingly gloomy picture was painted by a daylong procession of witnesses representing growers, processors and the chemical industry as the commission began preparations to write a report for U.S. negotiators on the international trade implications of Big Green’s 36-page section on pesticides.

Their characterization was categorically challenged by environmentalists, who labeled the hearing part of an effort by U.S. Trade Representative Carla A. Hills and the Bush Administration to preempt the November initiative by agreeing to weaker pesticide standards in international trade negotiations under way in Geneva.

“What these folks want to do is weaken environmental rules because they think that is what is good for international trade,” said Craig Merrilees of the San Francisco-based Consumer Pesticide Project. The experts who appeared before the commission Tuesday disagreed as sharply as the lobbyists and environmental activists.

Sandra Archibald, a professor at Stanford University’s Food Research Institute, told the commission that as many as 200 of the 300 pesticides used in California agriculture might be banned within two to eight years of the initiative’s adoption.

World prices for commodities dominated by California exports might increase 10% to 40%, Archibald said.

Grape producers “expect up to 100% yield losses in some years,” depending on weather, she said, while strawberry yields could be reduced 20% to 50%.

In an analysis of five major crops--grapes, strawberries, almonds, oranges and lettuce--she concluded that “consumers lose significantly, with some gainers and losers among California producers in the short run, but definite gains to non-California producers over time.”

The chief beneficiaries of Big Green’s pesticide provisions, said Archibald, would be multinational producers outside California who would continue operating outside the initiative’s stringent controls.

The Stanford professor’s glum assessment was challenged by David Pimentel, a Cornell University entomologist who told the commission that the pesticide industry historically has exaggerated the impact of new restrictions.

“Several studies suggest that it is technologically feasible to reduce pesticide use in the United States 35% to 50% without reducing crop yields,” he said.

Pimentel said that his own analysis of the same five crops studied by Archibald showed that substitutes are readily available for the pesticides that would be phased out.

“Using these substitute pesticides should not cause any appreciable decrease in pest-control efficiency, increase in crop losses to pests or increased pest-control costs,” he said.

Under the pesticide sections of the Big Green initiative--formally called the Environmental Protection Act of 1990--19 pesticides known to cause cancer or birth defects would be phased out within five years. Manufacturers would have five years to produce evidence of safety for another 36 products suspected of being carcinogenic.

Critics of the initiative stressed that its language leaves open the possibility that dozens of additional products could be removed from the market because controls on some inert materials used in pesticides also would be tightened.

Fresno County grower A. J. Yates estimated that 60 to 70 major pesticides now in use would be banned as a result of the initiative. All oil-based pesticides used to protect orchards against insects and disease might be eliminated because they contain benzene, he said.

“The loss of oil-based pesticides would devastate my operation,” he said. “I’d be faced with potentially incredible damage to my crops.”

As California approaches a decision on the ballot measure, trade negotiators from the United States and 95 other countries are moving toward liberalizing trade under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The GATT treaty is expected to be completed within the next several months.