03/05/08 Educating the Public

Educating the Public. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. The tree fruit industry is transitioning away from several pesticides that have long been used in helping eliminate pests. For a while the decisions by the EPA had been challenged and there is still some of that going on but Jay Brunner, Director of the Tree Fruit Research & Extension Center in Wenatchee says they are currently working on a project to help educate pesticide users. BRUNNER: We have what we call a pest management transition project and this project was funded by the state legislature through the request of the tree fruit industry leaders and the tree fruit industry to develop a proactive education implementation effort helping growers and orchard managers transition from the old pesticide technologies to several new technologies that have been registered for use in the past 4 or 5 years. Brunner says they held a meeting last week to discuss how to proceed with the education process. BRUNNER: The information that we are delivering to the industry and the educational basis for that comes from our research and we've been doing a lot of research on these alternatives to organophosphate insecticides for the past, really, decade and we're bringing that information to the growers with the funding provided by the state that allows us to hire additional staff and actually go to the industry to work in small groups one on one. Growers are currently going through a slow phase out of Guthion and by 2012 it will no longer be available for use. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.