Category: Pesticides

Wine & Grass Seed Tour 2015

Last week I posted this photo from Shelly Boshart Davis…

IMG_4624-0I mentioned that it might seem strange in an agricultural area such as the pacific Northwest, an area known for growing over 280 different crops, that there may be some contention when it comes to farming as neighbors.  But in the past year or couple of years it has become apparent that there are risks when farming next to wine grapes and grass seed.  The problem comes during the spring.  Grass seed farmers, who need to keep their fields free from weeds in order to produce a high quality product, have to spray broad leaf herbicides around the end of March to beginning of April, depending on the weather each year.  These herbicides have traditionally been in a formulation that when put in the wrong conditions can “move” or “volatilize” and grow legs so to speak.  The herbicide then can move off the target site of a grass seed field, and drop onto another crop.  The biggest scare is when it decides to move to a vineyard that is nearby and if that vineyard is at the growing stage of bud break.  This is when the buds or fruit for the coming year start to come out of the vines.  This can cause a lot of damage to that vine for that year and in some extreme cases damage can last into the following season.

Obviously there is a reason to be concerned here.  Wine in Oregon has grown as an industry in our area in the past decade or so.  Oregon has been put on the map for their Pinot Noirs and I don’t see an end to the expansion into this market.  Grass seed growers have been around for generations here in Oregon building livelihoods on the mild climate and touting the name Grass Seed Capital of the World.  Actually 2/3 of the world’s grass seed comes from Oregon!! In the end, both industries have value here in Oregon agriculture.

So when winegrowers last year went to the legislature to try to take away those herbicide tools from grass seed growers, it woke a lot of us up to the fact that this is an issue that needs to be dealt with farmer to farmer, not through legislation. The tour that was sponsored by Oregon Seed Council and Oregon Winegrowers Association was the first step in doing just that.  There was a lot of talk about getting to know your neighbors.  Stories about vineyard owners bringing over a bottle of wine to talk about timing and crop rotation were told.  Success stories of farmers working side by side successfully for years were shared.  The ground work of moving forward with more education was set.

It’s easy to get defensive when practices within an industry collide.  I know that when we get farmer versus farmer in any forum it’s hard to swallow because both have their reasons for why their side is right or should get priority.  Who was there longer, who has a higher value, who is from this state and who isn’t.  These issues come to the surface so fast and with so much emotion it’s hard to sort through.  But when you look at the bottom line, that neither of us wants the other gone, we just want more communication and education about what is happening just over the fence row; that’s where you can start to work together to find solutions.

Here are a few things that I know:

  • On our farm we usually spray our herbicides (that could be harmful to grapes) at the end of March.  In most cases this is before bud break (usually at the beginning of April) for vineyards and a very safe time of year to put on our herbicides.
  • We are aware of drift issues and continually take classes and go to seminars that talk about how to reduce drift.
  • We are licensed applicators who want our pesticides to work in the most effective manner, to accomplish that we are always checking conditions such as the weather to make sure that our chemicals stays where we put it to get the job done.
  • Calling our neighbors for any sort of issue or question is not just a sometimes thing.  If there is anything we need to talk about or inform them of, they are just a phone call away.
  • Education even to homeowners in an area about the use of crossbow and other sensitive herbicides, which can be very harmful to grapes as well, is really important.  For example making sure they understand that October is the best time to spray blackberry briars to actually kill them, not in the spring or summer.

I walked away from the tour encouraged by what I heard from both sides of the conversation.  I hope that this tour continues and grows to include a more and more diverse set of attendees.  We are all here in Oregon because of the good soil to grow everything from Christmas trees to vegetables, grapes to grass seed and everything in between.  To keep tools in the toolbox to satisfy all our diverse practices here, there has to be an effort to work together in an ever changing landscape of crop rotations, markets and weather.

Wine & Grass Seed

  
Photo courtesy of Shelly Boshart Davis. 

It may not seem like a big deal, having a vineyard next to a grass seed field, but the challenges between these two crops have come to the fore front the past few years. 

This week I attended a tour that talked about the compromise and communication it requires to be successful when neighboring farms become more and more diverse in their cropping.   

Monday I will talk more about the issues and why many of us in both the grass seed and wine industry know that we can all be successful in Oregon as good farmers and neighbors.  

U.S. Breast Milk: Glyphosate-free

Earlier this year I googled pregnancy and pesticides.  Honestly I was curious to see if any other farming ladies had any advice on what and when to stay away from pesticides, what their thoughts were on driving a sprayer, mixing, using PPE (personal protective equipment) and any other ideas I hadn’t thought of.  In the end I came upon some really “out there” opinions.  One of them said that if you live near farming areas you should move, and went on to advise that you should also not live near anyone with a microwave…I quit reading at this point.  There is so much craziness out there about fear of pesticides and exposure it’s very overwhelming.  I ended up not looking any further on Google and enlisted the advice of people who I actually know and used the antique thing called a phone to call them.

After that experience I saw an article hitting my Facebook from Mom’s Across America.  They are a group that, from what I can tell, are out to stop the use of all chemicals in agriculture, and using plenty of fear to get their agenda across.  They had published a study done of a mere 10 women, concluding that yes, glyphosate (main ingredient used in Round-up)  was found in women’s breast milk.  As a mom who did nurse, I saw this article and to be honest, because of the source, took it with a grain of salt.  It was filed away in the back of my brain for a possible blog post in the future.

On July 27th, 2015, Michelle McGuire, a professor and researcher from Washington State University came out with a new study.  One that basically says Mom’s Across America got it wrong, that there was no glyphosate found in the breast milk of mothers in the US.  You can find the article here.  Now there is a lot of scientific talk when you read either conflicting articles, but I’m inclined to believe the findings from WSU for these main reasons.

  1. McGuire points out that the testing done for Moms Across America treated breast milk and water as the same substance.  From what I can read from the testing methods referred to on the Mom’s website, this is correct.  They describe the methods used for breast milk and water as being one in the same.  To me it makes perfect sense that there would and should be a difference in testing methods considering that the formulation itself of those two components are different.  They should then have separate testing methods, methods that were different when McGuire did the research.
  2. The study done first is in regards to only 10 women who were studied.  I couldn’t find out any information on these women or where their tests came from, the website only mentioned that they sent in their samples of urine and breast milk (chain of custody concerns).  I did like however that the study done by WSU used 41 women to study.  I would think that looking at more samples you would get a closer and more accurate picture of what is really going on.
  3. The women that were used in the study for WSU all live in an agricultural area (presumably the highest at risk for glyphosate to be found in them).  Also there was a good mix of those who had used glyphosate in farming, those who ate organic, those who lived on a farm, those who didn’t, etc.  Still there was no sign of glyphosate in their breast milk.

I’m glad that WSU and McGuire took the time to really look into this issue and come up with some more things to think about when it comes to whose study we believe in what has become a war almost of science vs. science.  Sometimes you have to take a step back and see what these studies are really saying, the subjects they use, the methods they use and draw your own opinions from there.  I’m sure that the battle back and forth of funding and who is friends with who along with the inevitable “Monsanto” overreach will be talked about in conjunction with these findings.  But as a walking example of a healthy person who has had plenty of exposure to glyphosate, because I’m a farmer and we use it on our farm for many different reasons, I can tell you that I feel plenty safe around all of these products, and I felt plenty safe nursing my baby too.

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