Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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May 22, 2008, 3:03AM
USDA axes national survey charting pesticide use
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5795900.html
By GARANCE BURKE Associated Press Writer

FRESNO, Calif. — Consumers and farmers will soon be on their own when it 
comes to finding out which pesticides are being sprayed on everything from 
corn to apples.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Wednesday it plans to do away with 
publishing its national survey tracking pesticide use, despite opposition 
from prominent scientists, the nation's largest farming organizations and 
environmental groups.

"If you don't know what's being used, then you don't know what to look for," 
said Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at The Organic Center, a nonprofit in 
Enterprise, Ore. "In the absence of information, people can be lulled into 
thinking that there are no problems with the use of pesticides on food in 
this country."

Since 1990, farmers and consumer advocates have relied on the agency's 
detailed annual report to learn which states apply the most pesticides and 
where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed to help cotton, grapes 
and oranges grow.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency also uses the fine-grained data when 
figuring out how chemicals should be regulated, and which pesticides pose the 
greatest risk to public health.

Joe Reilly, an acting administrator at the National Agricultural Statistics 
Service, said the program was cut because the agency could no longer afford 
to spend the $8 million the survey sapped from its $160 million annual budget.

"Unless new funds are made available there's not much that we can do," Reilly 
said.

While the agency "hates eliminating any report that is actually needed out in 
the American public," he said consumers could find similar data from private 
sources.

Still, only a handful of the major agricultural chemical companies spend the 
approximately $500,000 it costs to buy a full set of the privately collected 
data each year, according to a letter written by an advisory committee to the 
agency.

Most farmers can't afford to pay for the information and environmental groups 
use it to analyze which chemicals could turn up in local water supplies or 
endanger critical species.

Eliminating the program "will mean farmers will be subjected to conjecture 
and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer," said Don 
Lipton, a spokesman for the American Farm Bureau. "Given the historic concern 
about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, 
it's probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea."

Pesticide companies also rely on the program when they're looking to 
reregister agricultural chemicals, said Beth Carroll, a senior stewardship 
manager with Syngenta Crop Protection, Inc.

Reilly said the agency would "love to reinstate the program," but said for 
now it will only do key surveys. Those include the monthly crop report, which 
influences commodity prices on the futures market, and livestock reports, 
which set the price for hogs and cattle.

At a time when consumers are increasingly curious about what goes into their 
food, farmers, chemical companies and advocacy groups said the cuts would 
have wide-ranging affects.

"What we'll end up doing is understanding pesticide use through getting 
accident reports," said Steve Scholl-Buckwald, managing director at the San 
Francisco nonprofit Pesticide Action Network. "And that's a lousy way to 
protect public health."

___

On the Net:

National Agricultural Statistics Service: http://www.nass.usda.gov

The Organic Center: http://www.organic-center.org