Doing the Ground Work

It doesn’t really matter whether the threat of a lawsuit prompted Cherryfield Foods to act or whether the company was contemplating changes all along. What matters is that Maine’s biggest grower and processor of blueberries has announced that it will stop aerial spraying of pesticides on its land. The company will no longer provide aerial spraying services to those who grow blueberries on their own land for the company and will encourage them to switch to ground-based spraying.

Simply switching from aerial to ground-based spraying may not be that beneficial because the most prevalent method of ground spraying currently involves what is known as “air blast” spraying, which involves a machine spraying pesticides upwards into the air so that the chemical can be blown onto blueberry fields.

Two years ago, Cherryfield Foods bought a large boom sprayer that directs pesticides down at the berry plants on the ground. The company then developed a two-year plan to convert from aerial to ground spraying. Company president Ragnar Kamp declined to say how much the machine cost, but said the expense is worth the diminished public concerns about the effects of aerial spraying. The company may buy a second machine to spray its 10,000 acres. Fields are sprayed with fungicides in May and June. Spraying for fruit flies, the major blueberry insect pest, occurs in July.

As a company that operates in and around where people live, Cherryfield Foods had to react to public opinion, regardless of the validity of concerns, Mr. Kamp said. Such sentiment should be adopted by others as well. There has been growing public concern that aerial spraying results in pesticides landing on homes, yards, organic fields and in lakes and rivers. This summer the Board of Pesticide Control found that a New Hampshire pilot had sprayed the wrong fields three times in three years. Such incidents understandably fuel public concerns.

In addition, Cherryfield Foods was facing the threat of a lawsuit from environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Environment Maine. The groups accuse the company of violating the Clean Water Act because sprayed pesticides are blown into rivers and lakes. The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act says that as long as pesticide applicators do not intentionally spray beyond the borders of a specified field, they are within the limits of the law.

But the sight of helicopters over the blueberry fields of Washington County has long been cause for concern for many area residents. That concern was minimized by Cherryfield Food’s actions.