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Franklinton, LA | I have been reading posts concerning pesticide drift for well over 10 years. It appears that over half the responses recommend rewarding the guilty and punishing the innocent. Meanwhile the innocent tend to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.
Most farmers plan in advance for crop mix, variety selection, herbicide program, perform machinery maintenance and take care of numerous other things in the off season. Why not plan on ways to handle drift problems during the off season? For example, why not work with some friends, an ag consultant, your chemical dealer or county agent to get a lawyer to talk at a producer meeting? You can get the lawyer to discuss how to collect evidence than can be presented in court. He can discuss the importance of collecting tissue samples as soon as you realize you have a drift problem and how to assure proper custody of the tissue samples. Knowing you rights and the legal procedures for protecting these rights should be a top priority. Hopefully the lawyer will have the guilty parties doing some serious thinking about how they take care of business.
You can also contact an ag consultant or potential expert witnesses so they will be ready to check the field as soon as possible after the crop is damaged and during the growing season. Maybe the tissue samples should be sent to an independent lab and compare results with the state lab.
At any rate, discussing plans for action with friends and letting the rumor mill inform the guilty that you have plans in place to take action will have a very positive effect. | |
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