Ag at large: Clean air’s payoff death to some farms

A classic baseball story illustrates the damage that rabid environmentalism has done to production agriculture. It tells about the team manager who went in to play after his regular third baseman committed a series of costly errors. He did little better, and after a disastrous half inning in the field he returned to the dugout, telling his third baseman: "You've got third base so messed up nobody can play it."

That's where many in agriculture believe extreme environmentalism has led agriculture today. They feel the processes, tools and traditional practices involved in agricultural production have become so complicated, unrealistic and misdirected that nobody can deal with them.

Instead of counting on them for help and direction in the production of food for a hungry world, farmers are stumbling over them, guarding against them and where they can't dodge them, being put out of business by them.

Court ordered directions to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation provide a painful example. They deal with VOCs, volatile organic compounds, which are often released to the atmosphere during the application of agricultural chemicals.

In Ventura County the order to reduce the VOC level may lead strawberry growers to abandon as much as 5,000 acres. That represents a financial loss to them and the county of an estimated $100 million. If the acres go, so do as many as 10,000 farm worker jobs.

The regulations were imposed first there because the county represents a notoriously dirty air basin, and because healthy strawberry growth relies on soil fumigants, a group of chemicals purported to be among the most consistent to release VOCs.

But next year the real bombshell is scheduled to explode when the regulations start to apply to the Central Valley air basin. Fumigants will not be the only category of agricultural chemicals monitored. Several other workhorse compounds will be under scrutiny as well.

For example, gibberellin, the hormone used universally by table grape growers to cause berry size increase, will be measured. It is thought to be a significant contributor to increased VOC release levels.

The area under the microscope in the Central Valley is expected to include as much as 25,000 acres, and many thousands of farm worker jobs if agricultural operations have to be shut down to maintain clean air.

Opposing clean air is an unpopular position, but that's not where farmers are coming from. They are not convinced that the findings reported by environmentalists, even those who are judges, are correct. They suspect that some bad data have been introduced, perhaps inadvertently.

The one step that might help farmers avoid disaster is a hearing in Sacramento Superior Court July 18. It will rule on a suit by the Ventura County Agricultural Association that challenges and seeks to invalidate the regulations that limit the VOC output.

More than the weather will be heating up in July. The VOC issue affects too many people, too many businesses, too many communities to be accepted without widespread discussion and reflection.

Cordiality and common sense have typified the approach by the Department of Pesticide Regulation throughout the effort to enforce restrictions not of its own making. That doesn't make the rulings any less unwelcome or irritating to farmers who must comply.

Third base definitely is messed up, but worse than that, for some farmers the game might be over.

Don Curlee operates his own public relations firm specializing in agriculture issues. His column appears in The Sentinel every Thursday.

(July 3, 2008)