KUSP Reports: Environment

Grassy drainage ditches like this one have been shown to clean pesticides and fertilizers from agricultural runoff. Vegetable shippers, though, often demand that farms have no plants other than crops. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton | KUSP News

Between strict new regulations and demands from food buyers, farmers are caught in a tug between reducing pollution and food safety. Bringing both sides together will be difficult, but not impossible, say researchers.

Dirk Giannini is a vegetable grower in Salinas. On his farm is an old pond.

“This is part of the regulation, as far as trying to keep all this water on your ranch, if possible,” he says.

Solving an Old, Growing Problem

The regulation he’s talking about, the “Agricultural Order” was renewed with new conditions last fall. It’ll phase into full effect over the next few months and years. It’s part of the regional water board’s attempt to limit pollution.

The pollution that is targeted has already caused widespread trouble. It’s a likely culprit in some deaths of marine life. And it’s gotten into wells, causing health problems and forcing some people to buy bottled drinking water.

The biggest problems are from pesticides, sediment and excess nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorous. One of the best ways to keep pollution out of streams and rivers? It’s an old idea — keep as much water as possible on site, with a catch basin, like Giannini’s.

“This pond has been up on here by our ancestors and we use it for watering our roads during the spring and summer time,” he says.

Legacy of 2006 E. Coli Outbreak

While it’s not used to water produce, it can go on cover crops or for preparing fields before planting. This catch basin is staying put. But Giannini doesn’t expect the new runoff rules to result in many new basins along the Central Coast. That’s because food brokers and food buyers also place demands on farmers. They want fresh produce, free from contamination by animals or bacteria. The difficulty for farmers is that food safety demands don’t always jive with anti-pollution strategies.

“As far as more catch ponds going in, I think they’re combative to the food safety world,” Ginannini says. “It’s interesting to see the ag order and food safety go head to head with each other. And the farmers are just sitting here saying, ‘OK, we’ll follow the food safety,’ but it’s contradicting water quality, so we go back and forth. That’s frustrating too.”

Some food safety inspectors worry catch basins might shelter frogs or attract other wildlife. They’re afraid those animals could, potentially bring bacteria into the fields or even get caught in machines that clip bagged lettuce.

That’s the same reason why inspectors don’t like to see grassy, crop-free areas on a farm. These vegetated areas can filter water and prevent erosion. But, after the E.coli outbreak of 2006, some food buyers rejected crops from farmers if they had these areas.

Scott Horsfall of the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement says the organization encourages farmers to manage for both water quality and food safety. Cases of crop rejection can be down to the preferences of the individual buyer or inspector. This is frustrating researchers for like John Hunt, a toxicologist who studies the effects of pesticides in the region’s water.

“A lot of the systems that are effective in removing pesticides from run off involve vegetation. There has been a push recently by the large food brokers to remove all non-crop vegetation on farms,” Hunt says. “There’s a sense that that harbors perhaps rodents, perhaps amphibians that could get into the crops and cause food safety issues. I don’t think there’s real good data to support that. So that’s a big problem that a lot of people are working on right now is to resolve the pesticide treatment use of vegetation with the concerns of brokers for food safety.”

Cleaning Runoff in the Ditch

Farmer Dirk Giannini points out irrigation installed on a seeded lettuce bed. New regulations put greater pressure on farmers to limit pollution running off their fields. Photo: Danielle Venton

Michael Cahn, at the UC Cooperative Extension in Salinas, is one of those people. He’s interested in how water can be cleaned as it moves across a farm through wide, grass-filled ditches.

“And the idea is, can we treat this run off as it moves through either by slowing it down and holding it and let the biological processes break down the pesticide,” Cahn Says, “or by providing enough organic material where it will absorb the pesticide and hold it.”

In a preliminary trial, plantings of native red fescue, a common lawn grass, was shown to reduce pesticide load by 70 percent, compared with 14 percent in bare ditches. The grass doesn’t have a lot of seeds, so animals aren’t very attracted to it. He says, even though there’s little evidence non-crop vegetation is an actual food safety hazard, he understands why farmers are cautious. It’s just too risky. 10 acres of lettuce can be worth $100,000 dollars to a farmer.

“Would you take a chance of loosing $100,00 just to have some vegetation out there?” Cahn says. “That’s the type of business decision farmers have to make.”

But Cahn doesn’t believe the situation is hopeless. He’s seeking funding for follow up studies, and he believes that with more research, and a greater understanding among growers, regulators, food buyers and environmentalists, we can have cleaner water and safe food too.

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Workers prepare a Salinas area field for planting. As methods have grown more sophisticated, this process has involved less pesticide application. Photo: Danielle Venton

By Danielle Venton

The fields of Henry Hibino Farms are empty. Neat rows of raised dirt stretch along the fields, ready for the next planting. Farmer Kent Hibino said, “this is more of clay loam, it’s got a higher organic matter, as you get to the river it’s a sandy loam”. Kent looks out on his fields from his Chevy truck. “They’re bare now, but a few weeks ago they held lettuce, romaine, celery, broccoli and cauliflower”. Kent is a third generation farmer in the Salinas Valley, managing about 1,000 acres. And while these fields grow many of the same crops Kent knew as a child, he’s seen some big changes since then.

Modern farming, he says, uses new techniques that let farmers apply fewer chemicals to their land. Take, for example, the soil tests they do before a planting. Kent sends dirt samples from each field to a lab. The lab tests for nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and a host of other elements. The results inform him exactly what to apply.

Hibino: so we’ll take a hard look at that before pre-plant and sometimes we don’t even pre-plant because we feel everything is there, so that’s definitely a change from my dad’s time where they were just on program, now we look at everything field by field, what does that field need to survive.

Kent sees a slow, steady movement among farmers. Acre for acre, they’re having less of an environmental impact now than they did 10 years ago. Regulations are strict and pesticides and fertilizers have become expensive. Maximizing their efficiency is all a matter of staying competitive.

According to the California Department of Pesticide Regulation, this trend is real, and dramatic. Between 1998 and 2009 the total pounds used of the broad-based, more highly-regulated and generally more toxic pesticides — things like organophosphates, for example, declined 66 percent.

Growers now use licensed pest control officers to issue spray orders. They’ll only recommend a spray if pests are present above certain thresholds. Many farmers now use drip irrigation as well. This waters the plants at the roots, and reduces the chance of mildew. Using drip irrigation, by some estimates, allows farmers to cut fungicide use by half, and their pesticide use by a quarter.

Hibino: when you’re using drip irrigation, your spray bills will be a lot less when you use drip irrigation, and and you can fertilize through them, not using creating a mildewy microclimate overhead.

Farmers are also fertilizing through the drip systems. By targeting the application they can apply less overall. And farmers switch plantings to put organic matter back in the soil, and reduce the chance their crops will catch a disease.

April Mackie: that’s one reason we rotate crops, if you grow lettuce, that’s why we rotate with strawberries, reduce the number of bacteria and viruses in the soil

April Mackie is the Food Safety Manager for Martin Jefferson and Sons a large, family-run operation in Castroville. Spraying costs a couple of hundred dollars per acre so, April says, they’d rather not do it all.

Mackie: we don’t spray just to spray, we have a guy walking the fields if he sees a certain amount an area then he’ll know he needs to apply, it’s so expensive, they try not to spray if they can get away with it, that’ll eat you alive.

In this way, simply watching the bottom line is helping farmers have a smaller footprint.