SPRAY SAFE promotes drift prevention, safety, and communication in a positive spirit.

Winter time is a good time for growers to do worker pesticide safety training and sprayer calibration in preparation for the upcoming season.  I had the pleasure to speak to more than 200 growers and pesticide applicators  last week at the Yuba-Sutter Fairgrounds at a SPRAY SAFE meeting organized by the local Farm Bureau, Yuba-Sutter County Agricultural Commissioners, and UCCE.  SPRAY SAFE is a grassroots volunteer organization that formed to promote spray drift prevention, safety education, and good communication with agricultural neighbors.  The event has grown from 30 attendees in it's first year there and now receives full sponsorship from multiple companies, supporting a program with Spanish translation, lunch and raffle at no cost to the attendees.  Best of all, it puts a positive spin on our agricultural industry; and

Matt Bozzo, Yuba-Sutter FB and Fidel Perez, DPR deliver a "grower checklist"

promotes neighborly communication within our ag/urban communities. 

Brian Leahy, Dept. of Pesticide Regulation Director, was a keynote speaker.  Brian discussed proposed regulations (they're not final yet) concerning pesticide use around schools and the forthcoming requirement for annual field worker safety training to begin in 2017.  (Currently annual safety training is required for applicators, and field worker training is required every 5 years or when the field worker is new.)  DPR has just updated the pesticide safety leaflets for field workers (A-9 series) and pesticide handlers (A-8 series).  You can go to get a PDF of the English A-9 here, or the Spanish A-9 here. And to the English A-8 here, or the Spanish A-8 here.  These should be filled out and posted.

Parry Klassen, Exec. Director for CURES, discussed water quality and compliance with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board's irrigated lands program. All growers who apply irrigation to their commercial crop land are required to comply, and one way you can do this is by joining your regional coalition (hopefully everyone out there is already a coalition member).  If you need more information on where your local coalition is (there are several covering the watersheds within the Central Sierra region), you can contact me or click here.

My colleague Franz Niederholzer, who many of you have heard speak at my spray tech meetings, always does an excellent job of presenting the practical benefits of sprayer calibration and targeting the spray.  Franz emphasized that spray applications during the dormant season, when trees have little to no canopy, are a different animal and require adjustments to fan speed and/or travel speed to avoid drift. 

I spoke about the drift control nozzle choices growers have when spraying weeds, a thing we might be doing a lot of this coming spring because of all the rain germinating all of those pesky weed seeds.  I demonstrated, with the help of Alan of PBM Sprayers, air-induction (AI) and turbulence chamber nozzles.  These nozzles will deliver the same flow rate as a standard XR fan nozzle, but the droplet sizes these AI and turbulence nozzles produce are much larger than the fines of a standard XR.  Larger droplets drift less! 

At the end of the meeting I got a chance to speak with Brian Leahy about the possibility of forming a SPRAY SAFE group in the foothills. I'll be contacting our local Farm Bureaus and Ag. Commissioners to see if I can gather interest.