Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Counting California's Pesticide Use
When Governor Pete Wilson created the California Environmental
Protection Agency and consolidated all regulatory responsibility for pesti-
cides to DPR in 1991, the department created a system to track pesticide
use and estimate exposure risks. This comprehensive pesticide reporting
system was the first of its kind. Limited reporting to county agricultural
commissioners had been required since the state's designation of restricted
use materials in 1949, but starting in 1990 all pesticide applications had
to be reported. Agricultural leaders initially feared that the Pesticide Use
Reporting (PUR) system would be used to identify individual growers with
patterns of high use, but recently they have recognized that it justifies their
claim that growers rarely use the maximum permitted quantity of pesti-
cides, and in some cases, they can present data reporting the decline in the
use of certain pesticides. Environmental critics point out the 100 million-
pound discrepancy between pesticides reported in the PUR and total
pesticides sold in the state. The PUR documented high hazardous pesticide
use during the 1990s, roughly one-third of the total, although reported use
of the most problematic materials has recently declined.
objectives and in the successes claimed. This section describes how
California partnerships have been assessed and some of the difficulties
this entails.
In their need to continually justify their efforts and funding, agencies
and partnership leaders have undertaken numerous efforts to evaluate
their impacts. This struggle to find “results” is exacerbated by the diffi-
culty of evaluating grower learning about agroecological principles and
methods, which cannot be documented in the same simple fashion as the
“adoption” of an add-on technology like a piece of machinery or an
agrochemical.
Documenting reduction in pesticides has been considered the “Holy
Grail” of partnerships, especially by program staff, dating back to the
late 1990s. 31 Many consider it a necessary “proof” of a partnership's
impact to justify additional support. For some, this is the only objective
means to evaluate partnership impact. SAREP, DPR, and CAP staffers
have devoted considerable efforts to measuring project impacts, chiefly
in terms of agrochemical reduction, but also using other measurements.
Many agricultural organizations actively opposed the creation of the
PUR database, but are now finding it useful to demonstrate that their
 
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