North Central Illinois | BFarm - 6/9/2024 07:59
How does that affect your organic program? Do you have to leave a buffer next to neighbor's fields that is sold as conventional grain? I would think chemical drift or dry fertilizer getting thrown a few rows over would be a real issue. We always left a 24 row buffer when we had non gmo or whatever the contract specs required. Always enjoy seeing how you take care of your crops. A lot of work.
USDA NOP rules require a buffer "sufficient to avoid contamination." That's generally interpreted as 25-30' by most certification agencies as that fully addresses the inevitable minor issues with normal circumstances such as broadcast fertilizer that you mentioned. So, sometimes I harvest those edge rows and sell directly to the local elevator. Other fields I have a strip of hay on the border. This year I'm growing a few specialty crops on the border of a couple fields for a non certified organic market so I can still capture some premium from those acres.
As for drift beyond the buffer area or extreme amounts of drift/misapplication. That is evaluated on a case by case basis by the organic certification agency. Last time I had an issue was symptoms of dicamba vapor drift. They took a harvest sample and conducted residue testing. Depending on the severity the resolution could range from losing the organic status of the affected crop to the requirement that I restart the 3 year transition process.
So, a helpful reminder to applicators that you could be liable to pay the difference between conventional and organic crop price for 3 years in an aggregious drift incident.
Related to that, a lot of us organic and specialty crops producers list our fields on the DriftWatch online map so you can check what's possibly growing next to you.
https://driftwatch.org/
|
Herbicide damage?
