How can you have organic farms in mosquito control zones?

Here in Florida every county has its own mosquito control group. Basically via air and land, mosquitoes are sprayed for quite regularly. The pesticide is usually something like Dibrom, an organophosphate pesticide.

The thing is, we have "organic" farms all over the place. How? This stuff is sprayed indiscriminantly on EVERYTHING. It drives me nuts and I hate it so much, but it is the way here and I don't kid myself and try to call my produce organic. The thing is, how are all these other farms getting away with it? What am I missing?

I think it's a really good question, and it probably has to do with laws pertaining to the word "organic" which have little to do with really keeping poisons out of the food supply. How can any of us have pure food when poisons are being dumped everywhere constantly?

i completely agree with your concerns. they drove through the neighborhood spraying yesterday and i had to grab the kiddo and the cats before they got covered, this after our county saying it was too broke to continue spraying.
that being said, the spray is almost a necessary evil, like pasteurizing milk and chlorinated water. without the mosquito control we would lose people and children to encephalitis, instead of the occasional horse that we lose now. thank goodness we spray enough to not have malaria! and other horrific "tropical" diseases.
even organic things in florida usually have chemicals of some kind on or in them. the best reason ever to grow your own food, right?

ten

oldescrubland.blogspot.com

I'm planning to buy a ton of waterproof tarps to cover my beds and anything fruiting. Can anyone see a reason why that's a bad idea and won't work to avoid the pesticide?

I disagree that spraying is a necessary evil. It may seem necessary because ecosystem checks and balances have been destroyed by bad practices, but it is by no means necessary in the larger sense, in my opinion. Dumping poisons on everything is not an appropriate response to ecosystem destruction, in my opinion.

Here's an article which discusses natural mosquito controls: http://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com/2009/07/natures-mosquito-control.html

you do what you can and you control what you are in control of..at least you are trying.

we are fortunate here in N central Mich, they haven't ever sprayed here..

we do things to control mosquitos, like having fish in our ponds that are not fed other than what they can get from the pond, they eat most all of the mosquito larvae, we also try to keep water drainied out of other areas best we can..

Oh, crap! I had never even thought of that.

Our area only sprays a few times a year. The city we live nearby does what they call "regular spraying" (although outside the city limits we don't see them often) and has provided habitat for bats and purple martins. Occasionally they stock mosquito-eating fish, but it sounds like a rare occurrence. Whenever I see the mosquito trucks I've only been concerned about the air we breathe, but it's pretty obvious now that they're also aiming at the water.

Agreed! It is most certainly NOT necessary. Just like pasturizing milk is not necessary and destroys its value (homogenizing makes it a poison). And don't even get me started on the industrial toxic waste they put in city water!

Tyler Ludens wrote:I disagree that spraying is a necessary evil. It may seem necessary because ecosystem checks and balances have been destroyed by bad practices, but it is by no means necessary in the larger sense, in my opinion. Dumping poisons on everything is not an appropriate response to ecosystem destruction, in my opinion.

Here's an article which discusses natural mosquito controls: http://permaculturetokyo.blogspot.com/2009/07/natures-mosquito-control.html

It lost me at Mosquito Fish (Gambusia affins).This got widly released in Australia and often kills native fish that are far more efective at mossie control.

It only doesn't define what might be in the product just what you yourself didnot add.
Organic labeling is not a implicit label its a explicit label.

This also got me thinking.
What if we stop buying poison and paying to spray it and stop buying food and grow our own food, start being less sick.
Just imagine how small our GDP would be. If we all provided everything for ourselves and stop buying/trading we would have zero GDP.