Farming Leaders Assail Official’s Malathion Stance

Farm industry leaders are taking a Moorpark councilwoman to task for demanding that the city regulate growers who want to douse crops with malathion.

Ventura County Farm Bureau President Don Reeder said he has grave reservations concerning Councilwoman Eloise Brown’s demand that the city require growers to warn officials two weeks in advance when pesticides are sprayed.

Imposing a lengthy warning period could hurt farmers economically, Reeder said in a July 31 letter. “A two-week delay in treatment for a pest could result in the loss of the crop,” he said.

Reeder fired off the letter last week after Brown raised concerns about the health risks posed by malathion spraying on fields near Moorpark homes. The City Council is expected to take up the matter on Monday.

Another farm official had a stronger reaction to Brown’s complaint.

“It really is kind of a swipe at the whole farming industry and the whole regulatory industry as well,” said Rex Laird, the farm bureau’s executive director. “The unspoken allegation is that this has endangered the residents of Moorpark, and that’s simply not the case.”

The spread of the Mediterranean fruit fly in Southern California and the growing political opposition to aerial malathion spraying has Ventura County growers worried that the debate in Moorpark could threaten an $806-million farming industry, Laird said.

A helicopter pilot on July 22 doused an 18-acre onion field with malathion to get rid of a pest called a thrip. Since then, Fedelety Corp., the company that leases 50 acres of city-owned land, agreed to give 72 hours’ advance warning of any spraying, Moorpark City Manager Steve Kueny said.

But a second spraying a week later added fuel to the debate. A pilot sprayed a 1.5-acre squash and cucumber field with malathion to kill aphids. That field is owned by Petoseed, a private seed company.

A biologist monitored the spraying to ensure that no regulations were broken and that malathion did not drift into residential neighborhoods, Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail said.

Brown defended her attempts to control a chemical that has raised questions about possible health risks.

“I’m not farmer-bashing,” Brown said. “Those people are farming city land. The city has a responsibility to be protective of city residents.”

Brown said she has received calls from three Moorpark residents living near the fields who complained of respiratory problems after the spraying. Less than 100 acres of farm land is located within city limits.

But about 25% of the more than 1 million acres in the county is taken up by farms, according to the county’s most recent agricultural report.

To farmers, malathion is one of the tamest pesticides that can be used on crops, Laird said. Opposition to malathion spraying has baffled farmers who are used to dousing fields with more dangerous chemicals to get rid of pests, said Laird, whose group represents about 1,000 growers in the county.

In 1988, farmers sprayed 1,558 pounds of malathion on crops, a small proportion compared with the 2.8 million pounds of suspected cancer-causing chemicals sprayed by local farmers that year.

It is not the first time that Moorpark residents have become concerned about aerial malathion spraying.

When the Medfly threatened to invade the county earlier in the year, residents in the eastern part of the county, including Simi Valley and Moorpark, demanded that McPhail explain the plan for aerial spraying.

McPhail said he assured Moorpark residents that no aerial spraying would occur unless a fertile Medfly was found. There are still no signs that the pest has infested crops, he said.

But McPhail said he recently has been besieged by callers asking if the malathion spraying on farms means that a Medfly has been found.

“The thing that bothers me is that people are equating the use of malathion with the use against the Medfly,” McPhail said. “There is no Medfly in the county.”