Appendix
4. Pesticide application, harvesting methods and fresh vs. processed products
Background
Pesticide registrations consider human exposures during crop production, harvesting, and market use. Notes on pesticide applications were summarized from our grower surveys (see References in appendix) for overviews on methods of application and equipment.
Pesticide applications during production
For weed control, growers predominately apply their own herbicides, ranging from 71% in peanuts to 97% in sugarcane, as shown in Table 24. Ground equipment is predominately used for herbicides (73 to 93% of the time), usually tractors with enclosed cabs. Less than 5% is applied by
aircraft - with enclosed cockpits and GPS guidance systems. Spot applications, to treat escaped or scattered clumps of weeds, involves workers using hand guns. Spot treatments are applied on 2% of the peanut acreage to 25% in sugarcane where perennial grasses are a major problem. For insecticide applications, growers relied more heavily on custom applicators (see cotton example below; few insecticides are applied to peanuts or sugarcane). While we do not have data for vegetables, some extrapolations can be made; most herbicides are applied by growers and insecticides are predominately by aircraft since timely treatment is essential and the crop canopy limits use of ground equipment.