Reducing Pesticides

The Oregon Department of Agriculture is launching a new grant program and looking for innovative project proposals that prevent or reduce pesticides entering waters of the state. Steve Riley is ODA's Pesticide Stewardship Specialist and give us a rundown of the Pesticide Stewardship Partnership Program.

RILEY: It's a program that's been in place since about 2000. The program started in Hood River, that was the first pesticide stewardship partnership and that was an initiative that came about because there were some exceedences of a couple of organophosphate

pesticides in the water up there that had a potential impact on fish.

Columbia fruit growers in the area decided to solve the problem on their own and it has grown since then. Now the program has some dollars available to help.

RILEY: Because of the funding that we received from the legislature in 2013, we have a two-year run on this funding and we received about $200-thousand dollars that can be dedicated to technical assistance in the existing partnerships. So we've opened up a grant program to make it available for any potential recipients of the grant. The funding for the program ranges from $10 to $50-thousand dollars.

Riley says that the object is not to do away with any pesticides but only to more effectively control the application so that is does not enter water systems for agricultural, urban/rural residential, or forestry environments.

More on this tomorrow.

That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.