Last year, a Virginia state delegate proposed a bill in Virginia’s General Assembly that would require all agricultural aviators making an aerial application west of the Blue Ridge Mountains to provide a seven-day notification for all such applications.
Advocacy by NAAA, the Virginia Farm Bureau and other ag interests was able to convince the delegate to withdraw the legislation.
Recently, several residents in Grayson County, VA have formed an advocacy group called Preserve Grayson, which continues to press for a Virginia state law to require advanced notification and disclosure of chemicals before companies apply pesticides to the nearby commercial trees. NAAA CEO Andrew Moore commented in late December 2023 to an
article written by the Richmond Times Dispatch, a Richmond, VA newspaper, about the issue. Moore commented that seven days’ notification is not conducive to effective pest treatment He also commented that the EPA reviews pesticides for safety continuously and that enforcement provisions exist and are enforced by both the EPA and the states in the rare event that there is a misapplication.
Moore also provided details on DriftWatch where crop producers, beekeepers and pesticide applicators can voluntarily log information onto a geospatial database informing pesticide applicators of sensitive crops that may be nearby. “Nobody wants to be fined or damage things on nearby land,” Moore said. Read the article
here.
NAAA stands ready to assist state ag aviation associations with the information they may need to stave off burdensome and unnecessary regulations affecting ag aviation.