Green Acres: City vs. Country

I read today in the Island Farmer about someone putting nails in the entrance to a field, hoping to disrupt a farmer in Lot 16 from tending his fields. In this case that meant spraying liquid manure. The article pointed out that more people from urban areas are moving to the countryside and then becoming frustrated by farmers - the stinky shit smell of manure, slow moving vehicles on the road, noisy tractors in the fields at night. One thing struck me as odd: NO MENTION OF PESTICIDES!

I guess I fall into the urban category, having been raised in Summerside. LOL.

However, I don't mind any of the things mentioned in the article. I like farmers. But every three years the field across the road from my house is used to grow potatoes. And the last time they grew there, I was home for 11 sprayings.

11 sprayings! Not all pesticides mind you, sometimes it is herbicides or fungicides.

When we see the sprayer pull up in front of our house, we usually jump in the car and go away. My wife & I fear our kids will have to go back on the maxi mist machine, and maybe another lung infection or eventually asthma. Irrational or not - we have come to despise the sprayer.

SPRAYER = ASTHMA in our minds.

Farmers are important, and I even know a few and I admire their well rounded knowledge of plants, animals, machines and practical common sense. Farming is complicated - it involves all that knowledge plus business sense and financial planning. I can't think of another vocation that requires such a broad range of skills. I would like to be a farmer, of course I know nothing about how to actually do it and would probably make a fiasco of it.

I feel powerless to stop the spraying. What can I actually do to protect my family from the exposure to pesticides, herbicides and fungicides?

If PEI stopped farmers from spraying these poisons into the air, PEI would be a very clean and healthy place to live. Consider we have no smokestack industries, no mines or toxic dumps and we are even protected by the Northumberland Straight which must be a pretty good buffer against airborne particles from the mainland.

Could farmers do without the chemical poison? I think so, but it would be a painful transition and I think Irving/Cavendish Farms demands the potatoes needed for a four inch french fry. Irving probably supplies most of the pesticides, I think they are derived from petroleum.

One of my old high school buddies is the Director of Environmental affairs for Irving, but I doubt he could actually change anything. I probably buy just as many french fries from Wendy's and MacDonalds as anyone. So I am implicated as well.
It's going to be really fucking difficult to stop the spraying.

For now, I vote for the Green Party and support them as much as I can.

One plan I am working on is a notification system. Using the civic address information for PEI, which includes GPS location information, when a farmer plans to spray - he could call in to an automated system and schedule the time and place and type of spraying planned for the day. Then, anyone who wishes to be notified would be contacted by email or a voice message. Sounds simple enough, and at least we could plan our day around avoiding the drift.

I can understand the frustration of whoever put nails in the way of the farmers tractor. Such an act of vandalism is cowardly. The newspaper article says it was done because of the stench of manure - which I can live with. Pig shit odour is not hazardous to your health, unpleasant as it is. I can live with manure stink. It is pesticide use that frustrates me most, because it is killing my children.

But what can I do about it?