"Building Better Applicators...
One Neighbor at a Time"

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The North American Conference on Pesticide Spray Drift Management will be an intensive, four-day seminar, March 29 through April 1, 1998 at the Holiday Inn By the Bay in Portland, Maine. The purpose of this gathering is to draw the best minds from academia, industry, environmental advocacy, government, and, of course, the pesticide applicator community to address pesticide drift management.
Not since 1984 -- when the first North American Drift Conference convened in Portland -- has a conference of this scale devoted an entire agenda to drift management, including its social, legal and environmental implications. In 1984 the goal was to define "drift" and understand its origins. We come together again fourteen years later to look at ways to minimize pesticide spray drift and all its consequences. This objective is expressed in the theme to this year's conference: Building Better Applicators...One Neighbor at a Time.	Photo courtesy of Maine Helicopters, Inc.
Pesticide drift is one of the most contentious issues facing agriculture, especially as traditional farm regions continue to attract new residents from the more urban communities. In the three generations since industry lured rural America to the city, agriculture has embraced technologies such as pesticides to produce unprecedented yields of food and fiber from the receding land base. Today -- as urban sprawl swallows up once productive farm land and the face of rural communities is changing -- a new constituency has growing concerns over environmental and health issues associated with pesticide drift.
Photo Courtesy of UMCE.	Pesticide drift, however, is not exclusively a problem of agriculture. It can occur as utility rights-of-way and public roads are maintained with herbicides. Or when potential public health problems -- as seen recently by Browntail Moth control on the Casco Bay Islands in Maine and Eastern Equine Encephalitis in Rhode Island -- are prevented through aerial spray programs. Huge tracts of woodlands sprayed from the air for forestry or a homeowner's tree treated from the ground by an arborist are also opportunities for spray drift that may trigger public outrage or harm the environment.
For agriculture and these industries, pesticides are viewed as an indispensable tool -- one that protect crops, reduces costs and even prevents worker injury when compared to hand or mechanized control of many pest problems. But for many citizens who abut farms, rights-of-way and forests, spray drift is a cost of business they would rather not pay. Is there a middle ground?
Photo Courtesy of UMCE.	Yes. The incidence of drift can be reduced through minimized use of pesticides, better understanding of natural factors which invite or control drift, and use of technologies which apply chemicals more accurately. A highlight of the conference will be recent drift management research. Facilitated breakout sessions will use this research and other information in the development of drift management practices for each type of powered application equipment.
However, technology is not the only answer; applicators must better understand the concerns of their neighbor while the public needs to be better educated in the real and perceived risks associated with the use of pesticides. These and other topics comprise a timely agenda for the North American Conference on Pesticide Spray Drift Management -- Building Better Applicators...One Neighbor at a Time. Participation will be limited to 400 attendees. Take time today and register for the conference. This conference is hosted by the Maine Board of Pesticides Control -- an agency of the Maine Department of Agriculture, Food and Rural Resources -- and the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

Questions and comments may be sent to the Maine Board of Pesticide Control or
the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Last updated March 5, 1998.

Visitors since 3-7-97

"Building Better Applicators... One Neighbor at a Time"

Speaker Profiles

"Building Better Applicators...
One Neighbor at a Time"