HASTINGS - For decades, life in this tiny town revolved around the spud.
Residents swore that when they bit into a potato chip, they could tell whether the tuber was grown in Hastings. The high school football team was dubbed ``The Spudsters.'' A sign posted at the city limits still proclaims, ``Hastings: Potato Capital of Florida.''
But Hastings, population 607, isn't so certain of its identity these days. The verdant rows of potatoes have shrunk, replaced with Chinese cabbage, sorghum grain and sod grass. There are new homes, too, bought by folks who work in nearby St. Augustine but couldn't afford a house there.
Some of those newer residents cherish the slow pace of life in Hastings, yet are troubled by one of its pastoral mainstays: farmland pesticides. A debate has simmered for two years over whether chemicals sprayed on crops have drifted into the air near the new elementary school.
``Before, people were kind of left alone to do what they wanted to do,'' said Johnny Barnes, owner of Johnny's Kitchen, one of the town's few restaurants, which serves heaping, tasty portions of locally grown foods such as okra and purple cabbage. ``But that's changing.''
Pesticide drift has become a politically and emotionally charged issue from the blueberry farms of Maine to the apple orchards of Washington to the fields in Hastings, Fla. Farmers fear that any restriction of pesticides could jeopardize their industry, while some of their new neighbors worry that breathing the chemicals may cause health problems.
Complicating the matter: the risks of chronic, low-level exposure haven't been definitively studied. Short-term problems, anti-pesticide activists assert, can include headaches, eye irritation and breathing problems. They say longer-term problems may include asthma, cancer and birth defects.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency's Web site, ``The drift of spray from pesticide applications can expose people, wildlife, and the environment to pesticide residues that can cause health and environmental effects and property damage.'' Yet the pesticide residue that ends up somewhere other than crops can vary in volume and be based on weather, rain and soil conditions _ even if the chemicals are applied properly.
Similar conflicts have played out across the country.
In Washington state, monitoring stations were set up at certain apple orchards to measure whether pesticide sprays are drifting toward homes or schools. In September, a Santa Cruz, Calif., jury awarded an organic herb grower $1 million in damages after deciding a pesticide company violated the farmer's rights when its chemicals drifted with the fog onto his crops. And in Maine, some homeowners near blueberry farms are urging state officials to prohibit aerial application of pesticides within 200 feet of homes, buildings and public roads.
Full Story: http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-1222pesticide,0,2965519.story
