Market Farming

[S & S Aqua Farm <snsaquasys AT townsqr.com>]

Sorry if you've already had this posted -- I've not been following closely,
but think there has been a recent thread on using available manure for
composting.

Paula

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Corrupt Compost: Herbicide threatens state's growers, gardeners, waste
managers
Seattle Times, Tuesday, January 22, 2002

By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter

When Art Biggert of Bainbridge Island needed a source of manure to make
compost for his 1.5-acre farm, he turned to his neighborhood horse.
Biggert agreed to take away the manure, mixed with straw from the
horse's stall, which makes great compost.

Within eight days of planting, most of the tomatoes he put in holes
enriched with his homemade compost were dead. "I couldn't figure it out.
I thought it was me," Biggert said.

Then he read about how contamination of compost by the herbicide
clopyralid was killing plants at community gardens outside Spokane in
the summer of 2000. Biggert tested his soil, and it was positive for
clopyralid contamination.

The result has been costly. Biggert has cut his customer base from 50 to
30 members in his community-supported agriculture program, in which
customers pay a subscription upfront for a year's worth of vegetables.

The recent discovery of clopyralid (pronounced clo-PEER-a-lid) in
compost around the country is threatening not only growers and gardeners
but solid-waste-management systems that depend on composting to divert
tons of yard waste, food, land-clearing debris and other organic
material from landfills.

While not toxic to humans, pets, livestock or wildlife, scientists say,
the herbicide ruins sensitive plants in amounts as tiny as three parts
per billion.

Jerry Bartlett, manager of Cedar Grove Composting in Maple Valley, the
largest yard-waste-compost manufacturer in the country, advocates
restrictions on the use of clopyralid. Otherwise, he said, "this could
bankrupt us."

State and company tests at Cedar Grove last year found contamination in
some compost ingredients, or feedstocks, and one pile of finished
compost. Regulators tested for clopyralid at nine compost manufacturers
around the state in October, and found residue in the ingredients or the
finished compost at each one.

Composters face a perplexing problem.

"We can't win. If we tell feedstock providers we don't want their
material, we don't get the money for taking it," Bartlett said. "And if
we don't take feedstock, we can't make product, and then there is
nothing to sell."

The Washington state Department of Agriculture has said it is looking at
putting restrictions on clopyralid before the start of the next growing
season in April. But as regulators figure how to deal with the problem,
farmers, timber and land managers and lawn-care companies are pushing to
keep clopyralid on the market.

The very things that make the herbicide a problem in compost - its
potency and longevity - make it the tool of choice in the field.

"It lasts. And you can use it at very, very low rates, so the amount you
are actually putting in the environment is much less," said Heather
Hansen of Washington Friends of Farms and Forests, an advocacy group for
farmers and timber producers.

"If you are not going to use clopyralid, you are going to use a lot more
of something else."

For folks like Bartlett and Biggert, one of the biggest hurdles to
solving the clopyralid problem is figuring precisely how it's getting
into their compost.

Nothing short of a ban on residential use of clopyralid on lawns will
solve the problems, Bartlett said. Asking people to change the way they
use it won't help.

During a plant tour, he points to a Dumpster full of broken lawnmower
pieces and rusty lawn clippers heaved in the green trash people put out
along with their brush and grass trimmings.

"We can't even get people to keep their lawnmowers out of the green
trash. We certainly aren't going to get them to keep a couple parts per
billion of clopyralid out."

In Biggert's case, it turned out the straw in the bedding of the
neighborhood horse was the culprit. Purchased from a broker who in turn
bought the straw from 17 different farmers in Eastern Washington, the
contamination could never be traced back to its source.

"There is no chain of custody, no accountability; it's just tough luck,"
Biggert said.

Tests of Biggert's soil at a lab showed that damage occurred to some
plants at just three parts per billion of clopyralid in his compost.
That's typical, scientists say.

Dow AgroSciences, which makes the herbicide, has long known that it
doesn't belong on material that will be made into compost within the
same growing season, said Garry Hamlin, a Dow spokesman.

Labels on its products that contain clopyralid say treated materials
must be disposed of by "other means" if they are disposed of within one
year of application, Hamlin said.

But that's not much help in the real world, critics say. It's not even
legal to throw out yard waste in King County or Seattle, where
composting has been the disposal method of choice for years.

The state Department of Ecology estimates 450,000 tons of organic
material is composted across the state annually, comprising 20 percent
of the state's total recycled waste.

Composting also is an increasingly important tool in managing more than
250,000 tons of horse manure generated in King County every year that
could otherwise pollute streams.

Meanwhile, the Spokane Regional Compost Facility in Colbert, owned by
the city's Spokane Regional Solid Waste System, has 25,000 cubic yards
of compost on-site contaminated with clopyralid.

As of October, the facility manager reported $12,900 in claims against
the city for plant damage caused by clopyralid-tainted compost, and
about $155,000 in lost compost sales.

Dow AgroSciences attributes the problem in Spokane in part to an
aggressive yard-waste-recycling program combined with unusually high
rates of use of clopyralid on residential lawns.

More herbicide containing clopyralid - about 1,367 gallons - was sold in
Spokane both by volume and on a per-acre basis than anywhere else in the
U.S. in 2000, according to Dow. By comparison, only about 460 gallons
were sold in all of Western Washington that year.

Applicators estimate the percentage of treated lawns may be as much as
twice the national average in Spokane, according to Dow.

The composting program at Washington State University is also at a
standstill because of clopyralid contamination. The state paid more than
$250,000 last year to cover problem compost costs, including claims
brought by growers and gardeners and nursery operators with plants
killed by contaminated compost.

And for the second year in a row, WSU's composting program turned out
compost too contaminated for use in anything other than quarry
reclamation, said director Dan Caldwell.

Copyright C 2002 The Seattle Times Company