Following years of political struggle, the Oregon Department of Agriculture released its first chemical use report since authorized by the legislature in 1999.

Not surprising, agriculture accounted for almost all of the chemical use (about 85 percent of the total). Potatoes received the most chemical applications, accounting for 42 percent of the more than 40 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides applied to Oregon farms and forests last year.

The most-applied chemical, a soil fumigant used in potato production, was metam-sodium. Second on the list is glyphosate (Roundup). About 550 different chemicals are cited in the report.

News of this report is comforting in light of the USDA’s recent announcement to suspend the only federal program that tracks chemical use in American agriculture.

Plenty Magazine reports:

The decision to scrap the program has caused panic among researchers who rely on the data. They say there’s simply no alternative to the federal reports: Private companies that collect similar information charge up to $500,000 a year for their services, putting them out of reach of most government agencies and all academic or non-profit researchers. Federal government officials say it’ll now be all but impossible for them to monitor agricultural pollutants in our air, soil, and water. The EPA’s pesticide office has already sent an anguished letter begging the USDA to reconsider its decision; officials at the US Geological Survey (USGS), meanwhile, say they’ll now have to use out-of-date figures to try to trace the sources of water pollution.

It's easy to see how vital this data is to informing policy decisions on land management, farmworker and food safety, and water quality (to name a few). USDA's decision is truly a disservice.

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Comments (4)

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Are you surprised?
written by rvguy, August 06, 2008

I'm surprised this administration would have waited this long to make the amount of poison being sprayed on us a secret.

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