Tag Archives: drift

Agrochemical drift causing diseases and death in Argentina and Georgia

Pesticide poisoning has rapidly increased in Argentina as Monsanto-seed pesticided crops ramped up. Meanwhile in Georgia, 90+% of common crops already are doused in pesticides. What effects are all those poisons having on our own children and adults?

Michael Warren and Natacha Pisarenko wrote for AP today, Argentines link health crisis to agrochemicals,

Argentine farmworker Fabian Tomasi wasn’t trained to use protective gear as he pumped pesticides into crop dusters. Now at 47, he’s a living skeleton.

Schoolteacher Andrea Druetta lives in a town where it’s illegal to spray agrochemicals within 550 yards of homes, and yet soy is planted just 33 yards from her back door. Recently, her boys were showered in chemicals while swimming in their backyard pool.

Sofia Gatica’s search for answers after losing her newborn to kidney failure led to Argentina’s first criminal convictions for illegal spraying last year. But 80 percent of her neighbors’ children surveyed carry pesticides in their blood.

Meanwhile, German researchers found pesticides in all samples of urine, and back in the U.S.A. and Canada, researchers found pesticide metabolites in 95% of schoolchildren tested.

90+% of cotton, soybeans, peanuts, and corn around here are doused in agrochemicals, and even Continue reading

Pesticide spray drift finally gets legal rebuf

Tired of hacking and coughing after cotton fields get sprayed to open their bolls? Tired of losing your garden or organic crops to Roundup drift? Now there are two precedents for legal recourse.

Ethan A. Huff wrote for NaturalNews.com 3 August 2011, Court rules organic farmers can sue conventional, GMO farmers whose pesticides ‘trespass’ and contaminate their fields

Purveyors of conventional and genetically-modified (GM) crops — and the pesticides and herbicides that accompany them — are finally getting a taste of their own legal medicine. Minnesota’s Star Tribune has reported that the Minnesota Court of Appeals recently ruled that a large organic farm surrounded by chemical-laden conventional farms can seek damages for lost crops, as well as lost profits, caused by the illegal trespassing of pesticides and herbicides on its property.

Oluf and Debra Johnson’s 1,500-acre organic farm in Stearns County, Minn., has repeatedly been contaminated by nearby conventional and GMO farms since the couple started it in the 1990s. A local pesticide cooperative known as Paynesville Farmers Union (PFU), which is near the farm, has been cited at least four times for violating pesticide laws, and inadvertently causing damage to the Johnson’s farm.

The first time it was realized that pesticides had drifted onto the Johnson’s farm in 1998, PFU apologized, but did not agree to pay for damages. As anyone with an understanding of organic practices knows, even a small bit of contamination can result in having to plow under that season’s crops, forget profits, and even lose the ability to grow organic crops in the same field for at least a couple years.

And all most people have done so far is let it slide. But the Johnsons did something. Continue reading