State plans to start pesticide notifications early next year

By Caleb Hampton 

The California Department of Pesticide Regulation moved closer this month to finalizing a new regulation that would provide advance public notice of restricted-use pesticide applications on farms.

During the past few weeks, the department held public meetings and accepted a final round of comments on the proposed rule it has been developing since 2021. DPR plans to launch the notification system in the first quarter of 2025.

The new regulation would create an online map of planned applications, drawing the data from the notices of intent farmers submit to county agricultural commissioners before they are permitted to apply restricted-use pesticides.

The “Spray Days” map would allow people to zoom in to their town or region and zoom out to view pesticide applications scheduled statewide. California residents would also be able to sign up for text-message alerts for nearby applications for up to 10 addresses.

Growers and farm advocates have complained the rule unfairly targets agriculture while exempting other sectors that use pesticides. And they have raised concerns that public access to planned applications will trigger appeals from activists to cancel restricted-use pesticide permits and expose farm sites to protests.

Taylor Roschen, legislative and regulatory advocate for the law firm Kahn, Soares and Conway, which represents various agricultural groups, said at a virtual DPR meeting last week that farmers in Monterey County, which has piloted a pesticide notification system, “already had felt the impact of appeals halting applications.”

Adam Borchard, director of government and public policy at the California Fresh Fruit Association, warned of “crop losses that occur as a result of missed applications.”

DPR sought to quell concerns that the notification system would enable appeals. The department has seen “a major increase” statewide in appeals to halt restricted-use pesticide applications “even before this system has gone into place,” Ken Everett, assistant director of DPR, said at the meeting.

But he said the small window during which scheduled applications will appear online would be too narrow for the system to be used for appeals, which typically take longer for the department to review.

With increased scrutiny of pesticides from community health advocates in recent years, farmers voiced concern that publicizing planned applications could expose farm sites to demonstrations, trespassing, privacy violations or other forms of unwanted attention.

“To send a thing out across the state saying you’re going to spray something,” said Kevin Merrill, a Santa Barbara County winegrape grower, “it opens up the door to these radical groups to go out and protest where a spray is going to happen.”

The proposed system will not list the specific farm or address where an application is planned, but will identify the zone down to a 1-mile radius. That solution has left both farmers and community advocates unhappy.

“In rural areas, you’re going to be able to figure out who is spraying,” said Isabella Quinonez, government affairs analyst for the California Farm Bureau.

Meanwhile, community organizers have launched a campaign demanding that DPR modify the rule to include more precise location information, arguing the 1-mile radius is not specific enough to make the notification system useful.

“It is not sufficient to protect the people who live in the communities surrounding these applications,” said Vanessa Forsythe, a retired school nurse from San Diego and policy committee co-chair of California Nurses for Environmental Health and Justice.

Yanely Martinez, a community organizer for Safe Ag Safe Schools who serves on the Greenfield City Council in Monterey County, said that with advance warning of a pesticide application, she would take concrete steps to protect her asthmatic child and her aging father, including closing windows and keeping vulnerable family members indoors.

“It’s going to give me the opportunity to protect myself” from pesticide exposure, she said.

The “Spray Days” system would be limited to applications of restricted-use pesticides, those judged to carry a higher risk of harm for people, wildlife and the environment if not applied with appropriate restrictions.

These pesticides account for a fraction of those applied on farms, typically being used only “when things have really turned for the worse,” Quinonez said, and for specific uses such as to clear pests from an orchard before shaking almond trees. DPR has deemed most pesticides safe enough to apply without providing notice.

Farmers argued California already aggressively regulates pesticides, requiring applicators to be licensed and to get permits before applying restricted-use pesticides. Agricultural commissioners are entrusted to assess local conditions to ensure restricted-use pesticides are applied safely.

If DPR wants to improve safety around pesticides, Quinonez said at the virtual meeting, it should prioritize approving safer pesticides for farmers to use. The time it takes for the department to process registrations for new pesticides doubled from 2019 to 2023, increasing to more than three years, according to a California State Auditor report released last year.

“The reality is that we have to have these tools to be able to feed all the people that we’re feeding,” said Merrill, the Santa Barbara County farmer. “There are less and less farmers all the time feeding more and more people, and if you don’t have some of these pesticides in your toolbox to deal with these things, we won’t have that food supply.”

(Caleb Hampton is an assistant editor of Ag Alert. He may be contacted at champton@cfbf.com.)