The Department of Pesticide Regulation partnered with a farmworker advocacy group to host an event dubbed a Toxic Tour of Santa Maria farms last Saturday, stoking outrage among farm groups. While the department has distanced itself from the inflammatory language, it did not buckle to industry pressure and back out of the event, heralding it instead as an opportunity to closely engage with the environmental justice community.
The event fell on the heels of the state passing a dramatic increase on the mill assessment to fund DPR programs and activities. Farm groups worry the added revenue from the sales tax will finance more such tours.
Last week Agri-Pulse obtained a flyer promoting the event, with DPR’s logo featured prominently at the top. The image appears to show children running away from a farm. DPR’s partner in the event was the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, or CAUSE. The same group is pushing Santa Barbara County to boost the minimum wage for farmworkers to $26 per hour.
The notion of a toxic tour traces back to the U.S. EPA, which has funded educational visits to superfund sites inundated with hazardous contamination. DPR’s toxic tour included farms and oil wells, but not superfund sites. Officials from DPR as well as the California Air Resources Board traveled to Santa Maria to board a bus with CAUSE organizers and local high school students. They drove around local farm fields and stopped at school sites to discuss the nearby agricultural operations.
The department decided to partner with CAUSE on the tour without reaching out to growers, raising confusion and frustrations in the farming community and with the local agricultural commissioners tasked with enforcing DPR’s regulations.
Maureen McGuire, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau, wondered why the department would allow CAUSE to conflate environmental disasters with farm tours. McGuire led an industry response to counter the provocative language and to urge closer collaboration with farmers. The coalition she formed encompasses county and state farm bureaus, the California Strawberry Commission and local business development associations. In a letter to DPR Director Julie Henderson, it called on the department to immediately withdraw its participation and its endorsement of the activist-led event.
Insinuating that agricultural operations are toxic fosters bias, promotes activism over lawful regulation and targets compliant businesses. It serves to damage DPR’s integrity and erode the trust of the agriculture community it serves, according to the letter.
DPR's Toxic Tour flier provoked ag outcry.The coalition speculates that endorsing the event with the DPR logo “effectively deputized non-government activist groups, granting these groups implied regulatory authority to act under DPR’s authority.” They called it a dangerous precedent, since the same activists have violated reentry intervals for fields after applications, harassed workers and disturbed operations “under the guise of public interest.”
McGuire worried the event would single out growers to be surveilled by activists as well as officials and said it poses a risk to growers.
“DPR's role is to be the impartial regulator,” she told Agri-Pulse. “When you start taking action in the communities, you really need to work with people in the communities.”
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She argued farmworker and environmental groups are “very well represented” in the county. She dispelled any notion that a gap exists between those groups, agriculture and regulators that would require DPR to get involved in the tour.
“There isn’t a need for DPR to come in,” she said.
McGuire attempted to sign up to attend the meeting but was told it had already reached capacity.
Chris Reardon, who directs government affairs at the California Farm Bureau, told Agri-Pulse he has engaged with the governor’s office on the issue and was told the decision to partner with CAUSE was a mistake.
“It strikes me as just tone deaf,” he said. “They're not paying attention to the broader community.”
Reardon, who spent a decade in leadership positions at DPR prior to shifting to the private sector, said environmental justice tours are well established, serving as educational opportunities for state and federal officials alike. But the events have always been in collaboration with farm groups and agricultural commissioners, and open to the public.
Another “troubling component,” he explained, is the governor’s office has struck an agreement with the Legislature to raise the mill fee 30%, after years of battling with the industry to do so. The additional revenue will, in part, drive the administration’s sustainable pest management agenda, which seeks to eliminate the use of certain controversial pesticides by 2050.
“Now that's going to be funded, and this is what they do for outreach?” said Reardon. “If this is future of SPM, we're going to have huge issues.”
Echoing the coalition, the California Agricultural Commissioners and Sealers Association stressed that its members enforce the most stringent regulations in the country and “local community members should feel confident they are being protected.” In a statement to Agri-Pulse, CACASA Executive Director Lindsey Carter cited the air monitoring statistics as well as other DPR reports demonstrating nearly all fruits and vegetables are free of illegal pesticide residues and that pesticide use steadily declined over the last decade.
“It’s unfortunate the very agency charged with ensuring California farms are safe would imply they are toxic,” said Carter. “This terminology is inaccurate and sends a mixed message to local communities.”
When Agri-Pulse pressed DPR with the concerns, a spokesperson issued a statement distancing the department from the toxic tour, saying local high school students organized the meeting with the help of the farmworker advocacy group CAUSE. According to DPR, the purpose was to gather community input and directly connect with the public. The department planned to temper the rhetoric by educating the audience on its regulatory role and explain the importance of pest management, its scientific review process and enforcement laws.
According to the statement, “DPR engages throughout the year with different stakeholder groups — including agricultural groups, pest control advisors, environmental groups, community-based organizations and others — to inform policies and action. We seek — as part of our long-term strategic goals — to expand regular, transparent, and meaningful access to the department.”
Maureen McGuire, Ventura County Farm Bureau McGuire was disappointed DPR’s statement did not directly disavow the label of toxic tour.
Michelle Ambriz has been hearing grower frustrations as well. A policy advocate at CAUSE, Ambriz admitted to Agri-Pulse the name Toxic Tour “sounds pretty loaded.” Previous iterations were simply environmental justice tours, but the severity of the issue has made the word toxic “pretty fitting” for this year’s event.
“Our goal with this isn't to paint agriculture in a bad way or to trespass,” she explained. “We just want to bring awareness to the issue here in Santa Maria.”
According to Ambriz, DPR contacted the group and was excited to work with them on an outreach event after partnering on a similar tour in Monterey County with the environmental group Californians for Pesticide Reform.
CAUSE intended to draw awareness of pesticide issues to local youths and to “help people to be able to better protect themselves.” The theme, she said, centers on the state prioritizing profits over people, with harmful pesticides sprayed near schools and low-income Latino neighborhoods.
“Why is our community a sacrifice zone?” she said.
Ambriz reasoned that the risk of pesticide exposure to workers and communities intersects with the group’s proposal to boost the minimum wage, since farmworkers are putting themselves at risk and face strenuous working conditions and discrimination on the job.
DPR told Agri-Pulse after the event that it provided an "opportunity to meet with, hear perspectives from and share information about our work with students and community members as part of our broad stakeholder engagement."
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