YAKIMA – Apple growers battle a legion of pests in their orchards – leafrollers, grape mealybugs, the woolly apple aphid, to name just a few – and employ any number of tactics to protect their crops.
Since the late 1950s, those efforts have included an insecticide known as azinphos-methol, or AZM, to control codling moths. However, as part of a series of reviews of chemicals that have been challenged by farmworker safety groups, the Environmental Protection Agency announced last month it would phase out use of AZM by 2012.
The end is still years out, but agricultural experts say it may not be the last such insecticide to be banned or further restricted, and fruit growers should start researching alternatives now so as not to panic later.
“It’s time to begin, even if the regulatory environment isn’t forcing it, using these alternatives to have a better understanding of how they work,” said Jay Brunner, entomologist and director of the Washington State University Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center.
In 1999, Washington apple growers used eight so-called organophosphate insecticides in their orchards to battle pests. By 2005, the number had fallen to just four, including AZM.
Organophosphates are among the most commonly used pesticides worldwide, both for agriculture and domestic use. Overexposure can also cause acute toxic effects: wheezing, nausea, headaches, seizures and in extreme cases, death.
Farmworker safety groups have been lobbying for the insecticides to be banned, and chemical companies have been working to develop less-toxic alternatives. Some already are on the market, while others are still awaiting approval by the federal government.
Like anything, they come with both benefits and disadvantages, Brunner said.
The newer products can improve worker safety, while allowing laborers to return to the fields more quickly after spraying. Growers may also be able to combat several pests at once with just one pesticide, he said.
Conversely, the newer products may kill enemy insects introduced to an orchard to take out pests. Many of the alternatives also are more expensive, ranging from 1.5 to 3 times more expensive than their traditional counterparts.
“New technology today is going to be more expensive than technology developed 40 years ago,” Brunner told fruit growers at the Washington Horticultural Association’s annual conference Wednesday. “But I do think you’ll see added benefits.”
Clark Seavert, an economist with Oregon State University, encouraged growers not to rashly begin cutting costs. Instead, they should focus on increasing their fruit size and improving the quality of their fruit to bring higher returns, even if it means higher costs, he said, so long as those costs don’t exceed what they can handle.
The changes are encouraging and long overdue, said Ken McCall, who grows 70 acres of apples on his 900-acre Pasco farm. The newer products provide for improved worker safety and come at a time when some pests had become resistant to the original pesticides anyway, he said.
But they also are going to make life interesting for growers in the next few years, he said.
“We may have to change how we put workers in the field. We may have to change how we spray. I can see a need for myself to gather more knowledge, and find out who I’ll use as an expert, because I’m not one,” McCall said. “But we needed these solutions. We just have to work out the kinks in the system.”
McCall’s farm foreman, Trinidad Cervantes, echoed that sentiment, saying the phase outs for certain dangerous pesticides – such as AZM – are a positive move for farmworker safety.
“Now there’s a lot to consider,” he said. “There’s a lot to learn.”
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