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Pesticide gets reprieve

The Bush administration allows farmers - many of them in Florida - to continue to use methyl bromide.

By WILLIAM R. LEVESQUE
Published December 18, 2004

PLANT CITY - Strawberry farmer Carl Grooms calls the people who believe methyl bromide depletes the ozone "tree huggers and frog kissers."

Talk of phasing out the pesticide generates bad feelings among farmers.

"We have been using it for 40 years," Grooms said Friday. "They say it depletes the ozone. But they go and let other countries use it. There's just nothing that works nearly as well. Nothing at all."

On Thursday, the Bush administration announced new rules effective Jan. 1 allowing farmers for a range of crops, from strawberries to tomatoes and peppers, to continue using one of farming's most-popular and effective pesticides.

The pest-control agent had been scheduled to be phased out next year by international treaty in some nations, including the United States, though some developing nations such as Mexico are free to use it until 2014.

The United States has won a string of extensions. The pesticide was originally scheduled for phaseout in 2001.

Farmers in the United States and about a dozen other nations won a "critical use" exemption during negotiations in Prague, Czech Republic, last month. International negotiators granted the United States' request to continue using methyl bromide at 37 percent of the rate used in the country in 1991, or 5,550 tons.

In 2006, U.S. farmers might have to cut their usage to 27 percent, or 1,500 tons less, to meet the goals of the United Nations' 1987 Montreal Protocol.

Methyl bromide is particularly important to farmers in Florida's warm climate, killing everything from termites to nematodes. Strawberry farmers, most of whom in Florida are clustered around the Plant City area, say it essentially sterilizes the soil.

"It's a panacea," said Chip Hinton, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association.

Hinton said scientists have been working to develop an alternative. But none have proven nearly as effective. Without the pesticide, crop yields for strawberries can be reduced by up to 26 percent.

"That's rough for farmers," Hinton said. "People in the industry wouldn't feel as bad about the reduction if everybody was on the same playing field. But they apply a different set of rules for developing countries."

Hinton said limiting the supply of the pesticide particularly affects many farmers who grow winter crops such as strawberries or tomatoes. That's because they plant and need methyl bromide late in the year, when farmers from other parts of the nation have used up much of the available supply.

Costs also have increased, farmers say.

Grooms, the Plant City farmer, said methyl bromide cost about 60 cents a pound a decade ago. Today, it's about $3 a pound, he said, and increasing all the time. He said strawberry growers use about 200 pounds an acre.

"People don't understand and the (Environmental Protection Agency) definitely doesn't understand expenses continue to go up in the agriculture world," Grooms said. "And we don't have the means to pass it along in our product. If we charge too much, people just don't buy it."

Some environmentalists contend the United States should not continue to ask for extensions.

"Catering to a handful of big chemical and agribusiness interests, the Bush administration is actually expanding the use of this dangerous, ozone-destroying chemical," said David Doniger, a policy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Farmers say they haven't taken for granted year-to-year extensions on methyl bromide, despite environmentalists' charges that the Bush administration is doing everything it can to protect them.

Some see each extension as an empty victory, given a continued curtailing of the amount of the pesticide farmers can use.

"My whole point is, if it's deemed environmentally sensitive, then deem it that way on a global basis," said Tony DiMare, vice president of DiMare Ruskin Inc., which grows about 5,000 acres of tomatoes in Florida."Phase it out for everybody around the world. It's typical government bureaucracy."

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified December 18, 2004, 00:08:20]