Guest Post: Public Comment on Blanket Spraying of Pesticides in CA Ends October 31!

Guest Post: Public Comment on Blanket Spraying of Pesticides in CA Ends October 31!

The following is an e-mail by Jan Beaulyn about the blanket spraying of pesticides in California. Please consider sending your own comment. This link has more information as well as an e-mail and directions for comment: Organic Consumers Association Web. You can respond by e-mail.

Dear Laura Petro:

My good friends are Biodynamic-organic farmers in California. Over the years their practices have influenced us. We are backyard farmers, mostly in order to eat more organic foods that we raise for ourselves. We are astounded by the change in our yard/garden just by stopping the use of any and all pesticides. Yes, occasionally we have to pull weeds (good exercise) but the pay-off has been astonishing. We are a regular stop off for hundreds of migrating birds. We share our apples and persimmons with them. We leave a water source for them to drink and bathe in. The reward is wonderful. We also now have many more honeybees.

Our Biodynamic farmer friends grew up on conventionally farmed land in Illinois and have been quite alarmed at the number of cases of autoimmune diseases and cancer that their immediate families have suffered. They stopped using agricultural chemicals on their Napa ranches and vineyard after the husband’s daughter became ill from the chemicals used in the vineyard where she was living. She actually became disabled and had to move out of the area to heal. When they stopped using herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, and artificial fertilizers, and started using Biodynamic/organic techniques and good farming, their production increased significantly, and they are able to effectively manage pests in organic ways that are not harmful to their farmworkers, to their ranch, or to their neighbors.

It is clear that several of the chemicals on the PEIR list of 79 are directly linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and reproductive system impacts as well as influencing honeybee hive collapses.

I urge the California Department of Food and Agriculture to stop Pest PEIR, the blanket approval of 79 chemicals also linked to cancer, birth defects, miscarriages, and reproductive system impacts, and to the destruction of honey bee populations.

Blanket use of these chemicals is categorically unfair. Let those who do not wish to be sprayed by these chemicals have the right to guard their own homes, ranches, vineyards and gardens.

This blanket approval of dangerous chemicals would profoundly impact many. For Biodynamic farmers it would risk their certification as Demeter Biodynamic organic farmers, and cause unspeakable destruction to the environment. We do not need more chemicals, we need better farmers who see the land as a renewable resource.

I urge you to look into this and to oppose Pest PEIR.

Thank you for your attention,

Jan Beaulyn & Don Felkins
Sebastopol, CA 95472