Assignment

The situation:

Self-employed, you operate a half-acre urban farm on leased land in Davis. You currently grow vegetables, herbs, flowers and some grain. You raise chickens for eggs and meat and as a basis for your microbiome-enhancing soil fertility program. You are considering raising honey bees for apitherapy products.

You are USDA certified organic, marketing your farm products locally to a dedicated customer base that puts high value on organic "live" foods, paying a premium for your farm products. You have no employees; you do all the work yourself with occasional volunteer help from friends.

While your income and use of the products from your farm are important to your own support, you have not "put all your eggs in one basket," and have a flexible part-time job as an organic inspector. You want to continue with the farm you have created.

It's time to renew your lease. Your landlord, who lives on the lot next door, will renew your lease for an additional four years but, as a condition of the lease, wants you to take over from him the maintenance of a 5-foot wide shrubbery-planted strip on his home lot adjacent to your farm road at the border of your farm leasehold.

Your landlord currently manages weeds on this strip by spraying the systemic herbicide Roundup and offers to give you his gallon of this herbicide to do the job, advising you that this is the most efficient and cheapest way to control the weeds, and furthermore assures you the product is safe and effective because he has been using it for years, applying the product once per month.

As you move forward to extend your lease and take over the management of this ornamental strip, you must make a management decision: how will you control the weeds in this area? Specifically, will you use the landlord's recommended herbicide?

All three choices given below could be done in accordance with your new lease. Chose the one of the three answers that represents the best management decision of the three, and then write a few short paragraphs describing why this is the best management decision. Your defense of your decision should be grounded in your perspective as the farmer of this particular farm and the manager of this particular on-going business, taking into consideration the current glyphosate controversy we have investigated in this course.

Choose one answer

(a) Continue with the landlord's weed management practice, using the Roundup on a once-a-month schedule to control weeds on the 5-foot wide ornamental strip.

(b) Reduce the amount of Roundup used on the 5-foot wide ornamental strip by one-half by limiting herbicide spraying to six times per year,spraying based more on weed threat rather than on a pre-determined calendar schedule.

(c) Discontinue all Roundup use; manage the 5-foot wide ornamental strip in accordance with the USDA National Organic Program rules so that you can have the 5-foot wide ornamental strip certified organic three years after the landlord's last Roundup spray.

Hint: Ask yourself, which management regime is the most conservative, most prudent action in this particular situation for this particular farm and farmer?