Page 3 - Salute to Arkansas Farm Families

Advertising Supplement to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Salute to Farm Families • Thursday, December 8, 2016 • 3H
When it comes to pesticides, the Envi- ronmental Protection Agency takes steps to ensure safety to plants, animals and people, Carroll said. The EPA conducts environ- mental impact studies before any product is approved, she added, and products are rereg- istered periodically to make sure they meet current standards. The EPA also sets the rate at which a pesticide should be used.
“Farmers are looking to apply at that rate or less, because anytime you apply a prod- uct to a crop, you’re actually increasing the cost of production,” she said. “They want to make sure that the products they apply are safe and that they apply those products in a responsible manner.”
The EPA also requires a certification pro- cess for both private and commercial pes- ticide applicators, she said, and applicators must pass a refresher course and test every five years.
Farmers can also reduce expenses and environmental impact by conserving water. New computer programs allow farmers to better gauge hole placement in poly-pipe irrigators, leading to great efficiency, she said.
In addition, farmers are working to re- duce the amount of groundwater pumped
up through wells, which can deplete un- derground aquifers, she said, adding that farmers are using more sustainable methods like channeling excess water from rivers and tailwater recovery, which captures and reuses runoff from irrigation and rainfall.
Reducing pumping can also reduce ener- gy use, she added, as can new equipment that allows farmers to accomplish multiple tasks with a single tractor sweep.
“Anything they can do to reduce the number of times that they go across the field reduces their energy use, and those are the kinds of efficiencies they look for all the time,” she said.
Other new technologies, such as GPS and drones, allow farmers to use precise mea- surements to apply fertilizers and pesticides, spread seeds, monitor water and nutrient levels, and perform countless other waste-re- ducing activities.
“There’s a lot of precision agriculture technology that they utilize,” Carroll said. “There’s so much data that is available to farmers now, and we’re honestly just beginning to scratch the surface.”
The Farm Bureau helps farmers stay cur- rent on industry practices by offering work- shops about research developments and
Any new equipment that allows farmers to expedite various farming methods can help reduce both energy expenses and carbon output.
environmental incentive programs, as well as monitoring agencies that regulate indus- trial practices, she said.
Many farmers also fund self-assess- ments known as checkoff programs, which allow state agencies to conduct research, promotion and development related to the agricultural sustainability.
“The whole goal of these research pro- grams that farmers fund themselves is to make sure that they help them farm in the most sustainable, effective, efficient way
possible,” she said, adding that the bureau prefers voluntary conservation programs to mandatory ones.
Bailey agreed that many environmental regulations, while well-intentioned, may be “putting a round peg in a square hole.”
“Farmers, if given the opportunity to do right, will,” he said, “but putting unnecessary regulations that draw away from being able to farm their property correctly just because the regulation needed to be in place, to us, is not the solution.”