County Moves Up to 8th in Use of Pesticides

Despite an increase in pesticide use last year in Ventura County, state regulators say growers decreased usage of some of the most toxic chemicals, including the controversial soil fumigant methyl bromide.

Pesticide use rose from 6.5 million pounds in 1999 to 7.1 million pounds last year, moving the county from 10th to eighth on California’s list of largest pesticide users, according to a report released last week by the state Department of Pesticide Regulation.

The upswing occurred even as pesticide use statewide dropped for the second straight year, to its lowest point since 1992.

However, much of the local increase was due to heavier reliance on nontoxic petroleum and mineral oils to battle crop-destroying insects. Such materials, which have the consistency of cooking oil, are sprayed on citrus trees to suffocate mites and other harmful pests, but are virtually harmless to people or beneficial insects.

Methyl Bromide to Be Banned in 2005

“You can take a bath in the stuff and it won’t hurt you,” said farmer Link Leavens, who manages 700 acres of lemon and avocado orchards around Ventura, Santa Paula and Moorpark. “It’s essentially a nontoxic way of dealing with some of the problems we have in our orchards.”

The use of petroleum and mineral oils increased nearly 600,000 pounds from 1999 to 2000.

At the same time, use of methyl bromide on strawberries and other crops dropped by 464,000 pounds, a surprise to many given growers’ reliance on the chemical in the county’s rapidly expanding strawberry industry.

But environmentalists and others who have fought to ban use of the cropland fumigant caution that such numbers can be deceiving.

Production of methyl bromide, long targeted for elimination because it is highly toxic and depletes the Earth’s ozone layer, is being phased out and is set to be banned altogether by 2005. That has set in motion a scramble to find alternatives.

Anti-pesticide advocates note that usage of one of those alternatives, metam-sodium, rose by more than 100,000 pounds in Ventura County last year.

It was an application of metam-sodium that drifted from an agricultural field in 1999 and sickened five employees and 17 students of an elementary school in the agricultural community of New Cuyama.

“Just because they are not using methyl bromide doesn’t necessarily mean they are using safer fumigants,” said Cesar Hernandez, who coordinates the Central Coast Environmental Health Project for the Oxnard office of California Rural Legal Assistance.

“I would caution a closer look at this kind of reporting,” he said. “Even with many less toxic chemicals, we are still talking about pesticides that are poisonous.”

Organic Pesticides Often Need More Applications

Overall in California, pesticide applications totaled about 188 million pounds last year compared with 202 million pounds in 1999.

Several counties showed significant declines during that period, including Fresno and Stanislaus counties, which each reduced usage by more than 2 million pounds.

Susan Johnson, pesticide deputy for Ventura County’s agricultural commissioner, attributes some of the overall decline to struggling farm economies in other parts of the state. Cotton and other crops are simply being plowed under, resulting in less need for pesticide applications in those areas.

She said it’s also harder to achieve dramatic declines in pesticide use in a place like Ventura County, where growers for decades have been moving to less toxic pest management strategies.

While the new state report chronicles a rise in pesticide use locally, she said it’s important for the public to understand that much of the increase can be attributed to the transition to organic materials. Such material may be nontoxic, she said, but can require more applications and thus increase the county’s pesticide usage.

However, she expects that trend to continue, especially as county agricultural officials move to limit the use of some pesticides near sensitive sites, such as schools. They did so earlier this month when they required growers to pull a special permit to use Chlorpyrifos, commonly known as Lorsban, near county schools.

The move stemmed from two reported drifts of the pesticide last year onto the Mound Elementary School campus in east Ventura from a lemon orchard across the street.

“That kind of trade-off is going to show up in increased pounds,” Johnson said. “But people should understand that all pesticides are not equal. More gallons of oil certainly equates to less gallons of Chlorpyrifos, and by almost anyone’s measure that is a good thing.”