C4—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, August 25,1984
While environmentalists press
for an end to agricultural
chemicals and naturalists talk
about food production without
chemicals, researchers continue in
their effort to find a better way to
produce our food supply using
chemicals in a safe and sensible
way.
If you doubt the continued need
for agricultural chemicals, par
ticularly pesticides, consider this:
Food producers worldwide battle
against 10,000 harmful insects, 1500
damaging diseases, 1800 noxious
weeds, and 1000 tiny nematode
species. Obviously it will take a lot
more than a sharp-eyed bug picker
to deal with crop damage potential
of that magnitude.
Beyond the usual problems of
oesticide handling and application
Reserve
corn
is released
Washington, D.C.
Com placed in the
farmer-owned reserve
from Oct. 6, 1981
through June 30, 1982
(reserve IV) has been
released for dedemp
tion, effective im
mediately, by Everett
Rank, executive vice
president of the U.S.
Department of
Agricutlure’s Com
modity Credit Cor
poration.
Rank said this means
farmers now may sell
but are not required to
sell their reserve IV
corn after repaying
their CCC price support
loan.
The reason for the
action, he said, was that
the national average
price received by far
mers for corn had
reached $3.16 per
bushel, 1 cent above the
$3.15 per bushel release
level for reserve IV
com.
USDA makes storage
payments to farmers
with grain in the
reserve. Upon
repayment of the loan,
farmers can keep the
storage payments
earned through the date
of repayment.
Release of reserve IV
corn will continue
through Sept. 30, Rank
said. If the five-day
national average
market price remains at
or above $3.15 on Sept.
30., storage earnings
will stop and interest on
the price support loan
will begin to accrue.
If the Sept. 30 price
falls below $3.15,
reserve IV com no
longer will be in release
status and farmers will
continue earning
storage payments.
Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
Del e Extension
is the burdensome task of disposal.
What does a farmer or commercial
applicator do with leftover
pesticides and with the residues
from pesticide containers?
There was a time when they
simply dug holesand buried them,
or stored diem in large containers
and then buried the large con
tainers. But environmentalists are
rapidly putting an end to that kind
of behavior, and rightly so.
They’re saying to pesticide users
that they must clean up their act,
and that includes safe disposal.
So what is a safe way to get ride
of pesticide residues? Researchers
at the lowa Agricultural Ex
periement Station are working
with the Environmental Protection
Agency, testing a system that
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holds great promise. It's simple,
can be accomplished on the farm,
and seems to be quite safe. A
research team of agronomists,
engineers, botanists, entomologists,
horticulturists and bacteriologist,
using funds from the En
vironmental Protection Agency,
has converged on a concrete pit
that is yielding a lot of information
about pesticide disposal.
The project involves a 12 x 30-
foot pit that slopes from 3 to 4-feet
deep. It’s lined with a layer of
gravel, followed by a layer of soil
and another layer of gravel. A tile
line underneath the pit allows
researchers to sample ground
water, and a movable ~ntr nr <-
thc pit during ram. This setup
allows the researchers to see what
does happen to pesticides that are
disposed of in such a manner.
The researchers were looking for
a system that would be leaking
proof and overflow proof, that
would provide an environment in
which chemicals could degrade or
decompose into harmless sub
stances. And they wanted
something that would allow water
evaporation to make room for
more waste. During the research
effort, more than 40 pesticides
have been disposed of in the pit,
usually in the form of rinse water
from applicator equipment.
Here’s the interesting part.
Researchers found no chemical
buildup in surrounding ground
water and no contamination in a
well, located only 240 feet from the
pit. They discovered that the
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chemicals did break down through
chemical and biological processes,
and that the atmosphere around
the pit contained less than one part
per billion of chemical con
tamination. According to one
researcher, that amount of con
tamination is equal to a speck of
dandruff on a hair stretched from
the earth to the moon.
At another site, the lowa
researchers looked at a number of
small pits made of plastic garbage
cans. These also produced en
couraging results.
The researchers say that while
the soil has an amazing ability to
absorb and break down pesticides,
man has the ability to produce
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chemicals faster than Mother
Nature can dispose of them. That
means seme form of containment,
perhaps the concrete pit or maybe
even the small plastic garbage
cans, are the answer to this
“pesty” problem.
Environmental purists will
probably find some way to object
to this solution to pesticide
disposal, but surely they will admit
it’s better than what goes on now.
And until they’ve carefully
analyzed the results of this
agricultural research, maybe they
should withhold judgment.
Perhaps this is an environmentally
good way to dispose of pesticides
chemicals that are necessary if we
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