Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] treated seeds consequences

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Bill Shoemaker" <wshoemak AT inil.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] treated seeds consequences
  • Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 14:54:58 -0500

Unless you plant on a massive scale and use lots of the seed treatment, it will probably biologically degrade before it causes any groundwater problems, especially if you feed your soil through composting, green manures, animal manures, etc. The microflora are actually quite capable of "feeding" on these substances to break them down and use the energy released. Most groundwater contamination results from massive, repeated use of pesticides, particularly herbicides. Also, they are not usually systemic, meaning the plant does not take them in. They will remain outside the plant and in the soil. The beans you harvest will not be contaminated and the shoot system will have no residues. They stay with the seed remnants.

Bill Shoemaker, Sr Research Specialist, Food Crops
University of Illinois - St Charles Horticulture Research Center
www.nres.uiuc.edu/faculty/directory/shoemaker_wh.html


Folks: I inadvertedly planted some seeds, unmarked, that were treated. My
questions: what effect does this have? I know it will "pollute" the soil
and eventually drain into the water table. But what will it do to the plant
(bean)? Will there be residue in the beans themselves? Should I destroy the
plant after harvest instead of putting it into the compost pile or tunrning
it in?

Do you know what the seeds were treated with? If beans, I'm guessing most likely it was a fungicide. Here's a website with some information that may be useful:

http://ohioline.osu.edu/b639/index.html

I don't know how the organic regs deal with this question, but if that's not a concern, my own inclination would be to not worry any more about it. The amount of fungicide per seed is quite small. It is likely to be largely confined to the seed coat, which will either remain in the soil after the cotyledons emerge, or to be dropped off by them as they sprout. Any small amount that penetrates to the cotyledons or the root tip would be so small, that it is likely to be dwarfed by the toxins we all ingest daily from just living in the world we do. I don't know what the half-life of the chemical used is, but it's pretty likely that, by harvest time, it's all broken down anyway. I wouldn't worry at all about composting.

If you really want something to worry about, ask yourself (as I do) what the effect is of all that rotenone we've been exposed to. Rotenone is used to induce Parkinson's disease in rats.

--
Richard Robinson
http://www.nasw.org/users/rrobinson/


_______________________________________________
Market-farming mailing list
Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page