Pesticide Survey

A recent survey completed by Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides suggests growers are using a variety of means to manage pest pressures in no-spray buffer areas along salmon streams. Sharon Selvaggio, NCAP's Healthy Wildlife and Water Program Director.

SELVAGGIO: We undertook the effort to understand how effective the states were at getting the word out to the applicators because these no-spray buffers are mandatory but they were never required to be displayed on pesticide product labels and so we had heard from a lot of growers and others that there's just a lot of confusion. Partly too, it's been a moving target over the years because some of these buffers have been in place since 2004 but the active ingredients that are subject to the labels have changed over the years.

She says they wanted to know if the states were getting the word out to the applicators in an effective manner, in addition...

SELVAGGIO: Whether they are using the salmon mapper tool which is kind of a new tool EPA put together over the last couple of years. What kind of alternatives are the growers using; what kind of informational training do growers think would be helpful and what do they thing about the buffers.

And she discusses some of the findings.

SELVAGGIO: Growers are using alternatives and the need and desire for more information and training on alternatives was very clearly demonstrated. The awareness of buffers which are mandatory is really important. There is still a lot of confusion and the states have a very important roll to play in this.

And that's Washington Ag Today. I'm Greg Martin, thanks for listening on the Ag Information Network of the West.