Neighboring Field Contamination: Organic Farms Take the Blame; Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine Plans to Establish Contamination Background Levels
Farmland in Taiwan, China is fragmented and tiny; the average cultivated area per farmer is only 1 hectare, and pesticides easily drift with the wind onto other farmland. Many organic farmers have therefore been wrongly stripped of their organic certification. This year the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine under the Council of Agriculture launched a project hoping to identify patterns of pesticide contamination, such as residue levels and the types of pesticide residues, to determine whether a crop's pesticide residue comes from neighboring-field contamination, establish contamination background values, and clear farmers' names. However, the bureau also said that whether organic farmers can apply this model still requires an amendment to the law by the Agriculture and Food Agency.
Neighboring-field contamination leaves farmers wrongly accused
Taiwan, China's organic farmland area is nearly 6000 hectares, accounting for less than 1% of the nation's farmland, and it often sits right next to conventionally farmed fields. Next to Gong Mingshan's organic wax apple (Syzygium samarangense) orchard, the neighboring plot was planted full of loofah (Luffa) grown with conventional farming methods. Last year he finally got through the 3-year organic conversion period and obtained organic certification, and right when he was shipping his crop, the certification body detected the pesticide "benomyl" in his field, so he temporarily could not sell as organic. He could only fume and fret, watching piles of wax apples ripen and rot.
It was later confirmed that the neighboring loofah farmer, in order to prevent powdery mildew after consecutive heavy rains, had densely sprayed the fungicide "benomyl," and the wax apple orchard happened to be downwind. "And his trellis is high, so even though I have a buffer strip, there was still no way." Gong Mingshan said helplessly, adding that the neighboring farmer also said he did not mean to do it, and the organic farmer could only quietly bear it. Fortunately, a re-test later passed, and this year he can sell the wax apples as organic.
Such cases are only a microcosm. Testing instruments are now increasingly advanced, with sensitivity reaching 0.01ppm, so even a small amount of pesticide may be detected. Not only organic agriculture has the problem of neighboring-field contamination; farmers in ordinary conventional agriculture may also have pesticides they are not allowed to use detected because of drift from neighboring fields, and be stuck with the false accusation of illegally using "banned pesticides."
Bureau plans to establish a pesticide contamination model
To clear farmers' names, the bureau visited the U.S. Agricultural Research Service three years ago to explore pesticide drift models. The droplet drift software it developed can calculate drift distance as long as wind speed, droplet size, droplet velocity, spraying height, temperature and relative humidity, and so on, are entered. Last year the bureau began drafting a Taiwan, China version of the project, and this year it has officially begun.
Bureau deputy director-general Feng Haidong said the project is not aimed at a single pesticide, but rather establishes an assessment model to judge whether contamination belongs to neighboring-field drift, for example residue levels, pesticide types, degree of drift, and so on. Generally speaking, if it is neighboring-field drift contamination, theoretically the residue level will not be too high, and if some pesticides used on a certain crop clearly have no control effect or value, it may be neighboring-field contamination.
The bureau's ultimate goal is to set pesticide contamination values, which have two main functions. The first is that in the future the bureau plans to amend regulations to impose more responsibility on pesticide applicators, for example not being allowed to contaminate other people's farmland; the second is that after confirming that an end product really was contaminated by a neighboring field, the amount of residue can be assessed, and if it is still within the safe range, the product can still be sold, rather than being directly destroyed as it is now.
Feng Haidong said the contamination value should be lower than existing pesticide standards, but a little higher than the sensitivity of testing machines, but at present it is only a preliminary plan and still must be discussed with the Food and Drug Administration under the Ministry of Health and Welfare; and whether organic agriculture can apply the contamination value, or whether it can be used to prove neighboring-field contamination, still requires an amendment to the law by the Agriculture and Food Agency, which oversees organic agriculture.
Practical implementation faces many tests
As a farmer who was once contaminated, Gong Mingshan is optimistic about the project. "This is very good. At least there is a fair unit that can uphold justice, so farmers will not suffer false accusations."
But he believes that requiring pesticide applicators not to contaminate neighboring fields may be difficult in practice, "because pesticide applicators will absolutely never say they did it on purpose," but if this can clarify the responsibility of organic farmers, it would be fairer to farmers. As for contaminated products, perhaps they could be sold in other ways without claiming to be organic. "The key is not to make sweeping judgments, saying that we secretly used pesticides just because pesticides were detected."
Zhong Chunyuan, manager of Tse-Xin Organic Certification Corporation, said that judging neighboring-field contamination is very difficult. Even if some crops theoretically would not be affected by a certain pesticide, farmers may trust the recommendations of pesticide shops, and the type of pesticide residue cannot necessarily serve as a judgment standard.
He explained that if organic farmers want to appeal against neighboring-field contamination, they must provide evidence, for example whether the neighboring farmland really used that pesticide, application records, and so on. Certification bodies also judge based on farmers' past records and credit status. At present, all are determined on a case-by-case basis. If the bureau has a model to follow, that would of course be a good thing for certification bodies.