Forum

The Amenity Forum met at Leicester City Football on the 16th October 2014. The conference was chaired by Prof. John Moverley and there were several guest speakers present.

Prof. Moverley opened the meeting and introduced the first speaker, Grant Stark of the CRD.
Grant spoke about the priorities of the CRD at the moment with reference to the Amenity Sector. His main points were improving practises in this sector through the use of CPD, enhancing water quality, in particular ensuring that glyphosate was kept out of water courses. He also mentioned that glyphosate and how it is used is on the CRD and HSE radar at the moment. Grant finished his talk on the importance of adopting an integrated approach to weed and pest control and then briefly mentioned improving practises in the home and garden sector.

Prof. Moverley then spoke and reiterated what Grant had said about the need for more training and CPD to be compulsory for the Amenity Sector and also touched on integrated management. He went on to say that more people within the sector need to become Amenity Assured and also the need for sprayer testing. Prof. Moverley then told us that the Amenity Forum were in the process of producing guidance sheets for practitioners in the sector, which included Guidance on an Integrated Approach, Guidance for Green keepers and Guidance for Using Pesticides Around Water. He then left the floor free for Paul Singleton of BASIS.

Paul was an addition to the list of speakers as he had some news to announce. He told us about a new initiative that BASIS are launching on the 1st Jan 2015 that will help members to fall within the guidelines of the SUD. This is called the BASIS Amenity Training Register and it will replace the current BASIS Amenity Register and NASOR and will be open to not only sprayer operators, but also suppliers. It is a joint venture between BASIS and City and Guilds and there is going to be a need for members to attain 15 points per year to remain on the register.

After a break, Ruth Mann who manages the Research Department of the STRI took to the floor and discussed how we can take an integrated approach and apply it to sports turf. She took this right back to the planning of a new playing surface and told us how they can use sunlight tracking cameras to work out how to keep as much of the surface in direct sunlight for as much of each day as possible. This she said would ensure that the grass was as healthy as possible and if some areas were still shaded during winter months, then supplementary lighting could be used. Ruth then went on to discuss that companies are now breeding shade and disease tolerant species and cultivars and this can also help in areas where it is not possible to befit from full sunlight. She also touched on fertilisers and how the amount and type of fertiliser along with timing of application can have an effect on how much disease ends up being present. Also mentioned was use of irrigation, and specifically how the pH of the water can sometimes cause disease and that the longer the surface is wet for then the more likely it is to become diseased. She also said that we should water to the full depth of the root zone as little as possible. Ruth finished up her talk by mentioning that mechanical methods already in place can also be thought of as disease control such as aeration and scarification. By removing thatch and allowing good airflow around the plant both above and below ground can often help it to remain disease free.

Ian Edser of Amey followed and talked us through a case study that Amey had carried out in Bristol using conventional spraying methods in one half of the city and using CDA’s in the other half. The outcome of this trial was that CDA’s were more efficient both with time and chemical.

Adrian Dixon, Head of the Policy Implementation Team at the CRD then spoke briefly about how policies are implemented with the EU and went on to say that there is a need for sector specific guidance notes, particularly in how we can use IPM in the amenity sector. He finished by touching on the need for those of us in the sector to be vigilant to the risk of illegal pesticides and also the need for us to maintain the standards of our equipment.

Adrian was followed by Anne Mette Dahl Jensen who is a Senior Advisor in Turfgrass at the University of Copenhagen who spoke about how pesticide use in Denmark has been dramatically reduced. She told us how drinking water in Denmark is nearly all taking straight from the ground direct to the tap with no treatment and so the government needed to ensure that there were no pesticide residues in the water. In order to achieve this a Voluntary Agreement was formed in 1998 to reduce the amount of pesticide use to zero by 2003. This target was not reached, but use was dramatically reduced and there is new target to reduce it by another 40% by 2015 and there are plans to still reduce the use of pesticides to zero in the future. Pesticide usage on golf courses has been of particular interest and they are slowly being phased out.

David Wain then spoke about the Streets Ahead project which is a £2.2 billion contract won by Amey to maintain the streets of Sheffield. While the contract stipulates that the council want a completely weed free area, there is emphasis on re-laying roads and pavements in a manner that will help to prevent weed growth and they intend to refurbish over 70% of Sheffield’s roads and pavements in the 5 year duration of the contract. Some people were suggesting that having a budget so high and stipulating that the areas should be weed free, would imply that more chemical would be used, but David said that there was much more emphasis on renewing areas so that weeds could not grow and also using a glyphosate/flazasulfuron mix where possible to reduce the amount of spraying needed.

After this, Mike Clough gave a very informative and amusing talk on the various invasive weed species that are currently an issue in the UK and how his company goes about controlling them. He also informed us of INNSA, the Invasive Non-Native Specialist Association and talked about the need for invasive weed specialists to become members of this organisation in order to cut down on “rogue traders”.

There was then a panel presentation form Bryan Homen of United Utilities, Melissa Hoskings of The Severn River Trust and Jan Hookey of the Environment Agency and they were all talking about pesticide use and water quality. Bryan specifically talked about glyphosate use around the water treatment and storage plants that United Utilities have and how they have actually stopped using it after trace of the chemical were found in the water. It is a very costly exercise to clean glyphosate from drinking water and it is not removed by the normal water treatment process. Jan then took the subject further by looking at the levels of other pesticides in water and spoke about the need to limit it to an absolute minimum. She accepted that the vast majority of pesticide user were responsible, but there is always room for improvement and she also said that it is thought that most of the pesticides in water come from hard surface run off when areas are sprayed and then a heavy rainfall follows. Jan also stated that if a spillage does occur, it is best to inform the EA as quickly as possible so that it can be contained. She cited an occurrence where a farmer overturned a sprayer on the bank of a ditch and he very quickly told his neighbour and he used some soil to bung the ditch. The EA were then able to treat the area in isolation and the local water supply was not affected. The final panel member to speak was Melissa and she gave us a very informative synopsis of the trials that she is carrying out on farms in the Warwickshire Avon Catchment Partnership. These trials are looking at metaldehyde in water and how the use of an alternative active ingredient, Ferric Phosphate, is having better results in the field and is also leaching much less.

The penultimate speaker was Manda Sansom of Monsanto’s Technology Development and Stewardship Department. She started off her presentation by telling us that the amount of money that the main chemical companies are spending on R+D is falling, so there are far less new active ingredients being introduced, so there is a greater need than ever to protect the ones we do have. To do this we need to make sure that we are using them responsibly, and not just end user. We have to be vigilant to illegal and counterfeit pesticides which it is estimated make up 10% of the UK market. She also said that Monsanto are currently trialling a new nozzle for knapsack spraying Roundup that will help to combat over dosing as the current flat fans or deflector tip nozzles are designed to give a wide swath and therefore you will hold it closer to the ground so not to over-spray. This then means that you are applying far more chemical than is needed, so this new nozzle has a narrow swath to over-come this issue. Manda then went on to inform us that Glyphosate is currently going through its re-registration process and it is all looking fine with no risk at the moment of it being withdrawn. Finally she told us that there is a new version of the Eco-plug in the pipeline that will be clean labelled and also made of biodegradable plastic.

Mark De’Ath of Headland Amenity then closed the forum by giving us some rules to follow in order to protect the active ingredients that we have left at our disposal. In summery these were:
• More training and CPD
• Good practice
• IPM, which Headland Amenity have just completed 6 years of research into
• Protect the environment, especially water.

My own interpretation of the conference was that we as an industry need to be very conscious of the amount of chemical we are using and how we are using or applying it. With there being a large amount of illegal/counterfeit product being sold in in the UK and also a lot of un-qualified spray operators, there is an ever increasing need for us to be vigilant and report these products and operators to the CRD. We also need to be aware of the training needs of both ourselves and the people we employ and ensure that everyone is kept up to date with qualifications and legislation. This could take many forms, but the feeling I got from the Forum is that the new BASIS Amenity Training Register is going to be the way forward with this. Finally, I also picked up that the emphasis for maintaining a higher standard in our industry is not just on the end user; it really starts at the top with the chemical manufacturers and filters down through the distributors to the end user with each having their own responsibilities.