Exotic Species Get Attention & Pesticides for Pot

Exotic Species Get Attention & Pesticides for Pot. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture has created a list of pesticide products to help guide marijuana growers and pesticide applicators throughout the state. The guide list contains 257 pesticide products. You can get the list on their website. Use of a pesticide on cannabis is allowed if it is intended for unspecified food products, is exempt from a tolerance, and is considered low risk. Currently, there are no registered pesticide products in Oregon that are specifically labeled for use on marijuana.

Each year states across the northwest see new exotic species of insects, slugs, and other invertebrates. Some of these are nothing to worry about but others create a good deal of concern. ODA entomologist Jim LaBonte has been tracking those pests for the past nine years.

LABONTE:  There's a certain percentage of them that are seriously bad species. It comes out to about 1 in 7. Every year, if you will, that we roll the dice, that we do the crap shoot, it's a pretty strong likelihood that every year, we are going to come up with a significant or major pest. On average, we've been getting somewhere between about five and a dozen species per year since 2007.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.