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Website lets sprayers check off-limit areas around Indiana

By MICHELE F. MIHALJEVICH
Indiana Correspondent

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Producers of pesticide-sensitive crops and chemical applicators can benefit from a website designed to protect such crops from chemical drift, an organizer of the program said.
The Pesticide Sensitive Crops and Habitats Registry at www.driftwatch.org allows producers with pesticide-sensitive crops to register their fields online in order to alert applicators not to spray near or over those fields, said Leighanne Hahn, water quality and endangered species specialist for the Office of the Indiana State Chemist. Sensitive habitat areas may also be registered.

There is no cost for producers to register their fields or for applicators to access the site, Hahn said. Use of the site is voluntary.

“The site enables communication between producers and applicators,” she said. “It allows people to engage at a local level and raises awareness about what’s going on at the local level.”
The first phase of the website began this spring as producers were encouraged to register their pesticide-sensitive fields, Hahn said. Five hundred to 600 fields were registered.

“I’m very encouraged with the initial interest and the number of fields that were registered,” she said.

The second phase includes the addition of “pushpins” on the website that allow applicators to easily see where sensitive fields are located. “This is a map-based program, and applicators can click on any marked fields in their areas and find contact and crop information for a particular field. The maps are a great communications tool,” she said.

The idea for the website began after Hahn heard a presentation from officials in Oklahoma, which has had a sensitive crop website since 2002.

“I thought the same principles could be applied in Indiana,” she said. “It seemed like there were a lot of parallels. I liked what they were doing in Oklahoma, but I thought we could do it better.”

Members of Purdue University’s agricultural and biological engineering department developed the site’s program. Sponsors including the Indiana Farm Bureau, the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR), the Indiana Certified Organic Growers Assoc. and the Indiana Soybean Alliance have offered support and financing, Hahn said. The monies were for development of the site and not for its operation, which is run by the state chemist’s office.
The site currently includes information from Indiana, but eventually, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri and Wisconsin are expected to join, she said. The protection of sensitive crops and habitats is a key benefit of the site, said Phil Marshall, director of the division of entomology and plant pathology for the DNR.

“We always like to know where specialty crops and sensitive habitats are located,” Marshall said in a statement. “We use a variety of control measures to curtail invasive species such as kudzu and gypsy moth. Having the ability to identify sensitive areas will allow us to better protect specialty crops and habitats from potential drift damage.”

Because many organic and specialty crop operations are small and mobile, it’s important for applicators to check the site regularly, Hahn said.

“Rotation is a part of the (production) strategy,” she said. “Fields could change from year to year.”

As the site evolves, Hahn hopes to see a system in place that would allow applicators to receive automatic e-mails from their designated areas of interest when a field is registered in those areas.

“We’d like to see links on the site to information on how to mitigate drift, and fact sheets and other resource guides about specific crops and specific sites,” she said. “There’s really a lot of opportunities for future development.”

7/22/2009