Organic crop farmers find persticides drift, contentious and costly

The chief scientist for The Organic Center says organic farmers shoulder most of the burden when pesticides drift from a neighboring farm.

Jessica Shade says organic farmers have little recourse when there’s off-target movement of pesticides being applied on conventional acres. 

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“It’s been stressing their relationships with neighbors (and) costing them money, but also costing them a lot of time. So there are a lot of things that don’t get quantified.”

Speaking to Brownfield at the Iowa Organic Conference in Iowa City Monday, she says the Organic Center is working to change that.

“We’ve been doing a national survey to really understand what farmers are experiencing, what strategies they find that work and what they think isn’t working.”

Shade says testing methods need to be improved because a large percentage of organic farmers don’t trust the process and think it’s too expensive.

Source: https://brownfieldagnews.com/news/organic-crop-farmers-find-pesticide-drift-contentious-and-costly/

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