Dust rules from EPA

[QUOTE]that isn't true at all for this area of the country but if you have something to look at I would be glad to read it. They use the same equipment if it is furrow irrigated and extensively tilled or if it is conservation-tilled and subsurfaced irrigated.

whoever said it was?




no exaggeration at all. I've lived around this all my life and agriculture is my brother's career choice. Call the experience up close and personal!

Ten passes, lets count.
1. plow
2. harrow
3. cross harrow
4. seed
5. roll
6. spray
7. spray
8. harvest

I count eight with perfect weather. You have to harrow plowed ground to make a seed bed. In a perfect world you would cross harrow, if you are behind schedule you would skip the cross harrow. In a perfect world you would roll after you seed this is especially nice if you are growing lentils and don't want to pick up a bunch of dirt while harvesting, plus packing the ground helps keep in moisture. It's also nice to drive grain trucks over rolled ground, but it doesn't always pan out. I counted spray twice, it doesn't make dust, but I wanted to be fair.

Edit to add. No till drills are extremely heavy so yes, you do need a bigger tractor to pull them, they are so heavy I swear you could seed a paved road with them. It just goes to show that you can live around something your whole life and not actually know what goes on.

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The best of men is only a man at best.

Thank you for giving the links that prove my earlier post. You had me going until your last paragraph. How do you farm in a way that doesn't require tiling?

I farmed for several years and have tried no tillage, Minimum tillage, and regular tillage. I farmed in Arkansas tell me how you are doing it without tillage. And I don't mean raising a garden but commercial farming like Wheat Rice,cotton and Soy beans. What are your yields and how much did it cost you to get those yields? Also do you use a cab tractor and combine on your farm to get away from dust pneumonia? Or are you one of those farmers that do it from your armchair and don't have any experance in real farming.

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God must have loved stupid people because he made so many of them.

This is the problem with govt mandated farming. Someone telling us how & when to do it, or a person sitting in an office in California telling us what day we can work our land/ crops.

Farming 30 miles from me is the same crops, but done _very_ differently. We do things because they have to be done. For the land, climate, crop, last year's crop, and weather we are dealing with.

There is no one size fits all, and that is being shown very, very well by our California friend in this thread.

Irrigation??? It's a non issue, no one in my county irrigates.

Blowing dirt? Probably see that once or twice a decade. You want higher priced food because of blowing dirt? I'm supposed to change everything I do because you see some blowing dirt?

No one in my county tries to _save_ moisture!!! Sheez the ground is way too wet all of March, April, & May, often times through June. We need to warm up the soil and get rid of water as rapidly as possible, who in their right mind wants to _keep_ spring water around???? (That is for 'here' of course.)

Haven't ever seen any of the crops talked about, the brother wouldn't even be considered a farmer in my county.

Here you grow corn and soybeans, with very minor acres of alfalfa, oats, wheat, and sweet corn & peas.

Typical here:

Plow in fall.
Field cultivate (with harrows on back) in spring.
Plant.
Spray.
Most of the time spray a 2nd time.
Combine.

Now, depending on the year,t here can be an extra pass or 2. Wet, or weedy, or lumpy, or need to chop up the cornstalks because they are too tough.

For my bean ground going into corn, I skip the fall plowing pass the past 5 years, so only 4 or maybe 5 passes.


Now, what the EPA wants to do is control the machines that make dust. You will have to junk out your $500 used baler, and buy an EPA cerified $25,000 baler that produces 50% less dust.

Same with lawn mowers, tillers, and other items you use on a homestead. Manure spreaders, livestock raising in general, feeding hay - everything.

It will affect the tools you use, the choices you have, and the cost of buying things other farmers raise.

Won't happen? You've heard of EPA stoves? We will EPA everything.

You ever notice the price difference between a wood stove an an EPA stove?

The idea that this has no difference, or no bearing, on farming & homesteading is silly. It is a major cost & burden, and I do not see the gains that we will have. I have no idea of what type of farming our friend from California is talking about, but really has nothing to do with farming in the midwest.

Farmers live healthier than average folk, so I find it odd that somehow the conditions on the farm are so bad it has to be controlled, but the city folk are just fine?

It all doesn't make any sense at all.

It does make money for Brazil, Mexico, China, and the container ships.

--->Paul

"Experience" doesnt mean youre doing it correctly. If you cant prep a field without making "10 passes", you need to find a better way to do things.

And what you do in your area of the country doesnt apply everywhere. That is why REGULATIONS dont need to be the same everywhere.

You cannot logically apply the same regulations to all the various farming operations that you would to other industries. To do so would only harm a lot more people than that little bit of inconvenient dust ever will.

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ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ

To prep the soil for planting you have 3 passes listed.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

I deal with environmental bureaucrats every day.

The asinine comments supporting this EPA dust regulation are very typical. What you just witnessed is how rules are promulgated. They sit in a dark room in the basement in a vacuum chamber and think this stuff up. Real farmers (or in my case industrialists) then come to the fore and educate these armchair commanders about how the real world works. Then the bureaucrat "dialogues" as you see here. Full of facts and figures and examples of what has worked on a small test plot in the Netherlands by some Greenpeace volunteer which is then extrapolated to the earth and beyond. The bureaucrats sit around and talk about it so much that it becomes reality. That is when we get into trouble.

When the real people in the real world tell them that it will never work, they ignore it and place them in "public comments." The bureaucrat then smugly implements an outlandish regulation without regard to consequence because government workers rarely, if ever, work in the real word. They prefer theories. Theories are much more malleable.

These bureaucrats have no skin in the game. Sometimes they are starry-eyed dreamers that have the best of intentions and do not realize that the road to hell was paved with good intentions. More often than not the bureaucrat is a person with self-esteem issues that is on a power trip. Either way the regulated end up having to deal with their screed.

To answer one of the first "dialogue" questions in this thread: a power plant is easy to control because a great deal of product is generated in one device with one single stack. All of the air pollution coming from the process exhausts from the stack. THere is a single point of control for which we have numerous technologies. Creating electricity is also a profitable enterprise that can absorb point-source control costs.

An industrial operation is a very dense manufacturing operation. Widgets are made and processed. Like the power plant, processes which emit air pollutants can be isolated and controlled. The process environment is dense and the profit adequate to absorb the costs. However, even this is getting ridiculous anymore. We are probably past the point of diminishing returns in air pollution regulations.

Now how we apply this to a farmer preparing a field for planting is beyond me. A vast land area can not be controlled. The farmers here have already "dialogued" about the various "conservation" tilling methods and where they work and where they fail. Additionally, we have a regional imbalance with regards to what works and what does not due to climate and drainage and growing season and a host of other factors. Where I live vehicles on dirt roads put far more dust in the air than when I prepare my hay field.

One size never fits all.

However, I do give the EPA points for audacity.

i just deal with them spring and fall, sometimes winter (new regs licensing etc.)!! my DW gets too deal with them year round as well. some environmental bureaucrats do know the field side of things others just book learned! had one guy last year telling me what too do and how too do it (would have created a runoff pollution problem), then we met face too face, he knows me from way back (he was a farm adviser who gave us bad advice! we made sure he was well known!) ! decided that my way made more sense! (mine was by the book plus 25 years experience!) as enviromental regs come down the pipeline, more and more inexperienced people are doing the enforcing, just may have too join the enforcement side of ag!
farmer run and honed legislation usually makes sense though conditions and practices may vary even 5 miles apart (we farm clay/rock moraines and clay bottoms while less than 5 miles away they farm sands!). doing custom work in an up too 100 mile radius has exposed me too all kinds of differing farm practices! (plus we have a lot of immigrant farmers with even more varied approaches!)

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àigeach carnaid
chaora dhubh
"Don't raise your voice, improve your argument."

cruachan

I'm sure the farmers living out in all that dust and nastiness would have more health problems than those living in the nearby cities who MAY get some of the dust. But I can tell you from experience those tricked out hoopty cars spilling out nasty exhaust and blaring noise all day and night makes the city air unbreathable. I don't think all the polution in the city is from the farmers, and maybe you need to look up some stats that either support your beliefs or you need to get of the mountain top.

Too bad farmers can't afford to go on strike for 1 season - that would put an end to nonsense like this.

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IT'S YOU. IT'S YOUR FAULT THAT THESE LEGISLATIVE JOKERS PASS ABSURD LAWS. IT'S NOT MY FAULT. I DON'T VOTE FOR THE CLOWNS.

YOU DON'T SEND OPPOSITION LETTERS TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVE. YOUR DON'T SIGN PETITIONS. YOU VOTE FOR THE SAME DEM OR REPUBLICAN, TERM AFTER TERM. YOU TELL YOURSELF THAT IT DOESN'T SUFFICIENTLY EFFECT YOU. YOU RESIGN YOURSELF INTO BELIEVING THAT IT IS COMING, REGARDLESS. YOU ARE THE ENABLER.

These proposed EPA rules, as well as others, are intended to create major changes in American society. Whether or not you believe the more restrictive laws are necessary, you must become involved in your local and regional politics. Voice your opinion. The country's elitists want to embark on some major societal changes. It involves a highly centralize government control structure. IMO, this future is not in the best interests of the middle class. It truly benefits the super-rich. Little by little, this piecemeal approach to "change" will occur if you don't become aware and then oppose it.

you seem to have left out the
spraying,
ripping,
discing,
cribing,
grading (fields are laser leveled around here),
furrowing,
rolling,
fumigation,
redisc,
recrib,
refurrow
and rerolling prior to planting then finally planting. Maybe you just aren't familiar with ag practices as they apply to the majority of California farmers. How many does that add up too?

I've never seen a no-till operation out here at all and it is not surprising since no till only makes up 0.1% of ag lands in California. It doesn't appear that you are very familiar at all with ag practices out here.

I'red anywhere in any proposed regulations that there would be a single flat rule and that there would not be any regional considerations or monitoring. Could someone point me to that verbage in the proposed regulations?

this seems to be more of an assumption than anything else. I've seen nothing proposed that supports this notion in any of my readings as they apply to dust control regulations.

From the sound of this thread, the proposed regs should be for California instead of national. I've never known a farmer to make an unnecesary pass over a field.

A Country wide Farmer strike would sure get their attention.


My DS has asthma. The few times we have had to live in down when DS was very young, his asthma was very bad, to the point he had to sleep sitting up even with all the meds.
We spent a lot of time finding out his triggers. Smoke from Diesel school bus and big rig engines, cigarettes, pollution only found concentrated in the City areas.
We finally got back to the Farm in 1997.... had no more Asthma attacks or issues. Then the places around us built up and he started having problems again. Little over 4 years ago we moved to this small farm. No Asthma again and we don't have to worry about this area getting built up.

Sebates is just saying the same thing over and over again and not listening to what people that Farm are saying. Sounds a lot like the bureaucrats.
I have not seen any detailed plan on how to keep dirt down for crops that can't get wet when harvesting. I have not seen photos of the machines that would be needed for no till. I have not seen firm prices it would cost for new machinery. Sounds like he is talking more of the Mega farms, not the medium to small farms that are careful with the land they have and mim tilling and so on as much as possible. Of course most of the Farms I know are Organic but they still have to till.

So why is my sons Asthma not bothering him, living in Hill Farm country? He gets tested every year, still has the same triggers but in the country he doesn't have breathing issues. If what you say it true everywhere.. my son should be having breathing issues.... which he is not.

The Air hands down,, even in Farm country is better than the Air around the cities and suburbs. Can't stand the smell of cities, they stink, makes me feel sick.

So I find it almost funny people would complain about dust from farms.
Dirt happens and there is no way to get rid of all dust period, unless those really "smart" people in the Gov offices finds a way to pave over all land and finds some magic pill to feed the people in this country. Oh.. and they had better pave all those dirt roads.. they make a extremely large amount of dust in the dry season around here.
Oh wait... for the road issue... the Gov can't even keep up with the paved road repairs they need to do now.

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Shari

Now hold on , I think a few of you may have misinterpreted what I said, or at least meant to say.

First it isn't the government telling me what to do and when to do it. It's the weather that determines how many times I can go over ground to prep a seed bed. I said in a perfect world I would harrow then cross harrow. Plowed ground has more surface area exposed so it dries out faster but it's rougher than the hubs of hell. Depending on the lay of the field even cross harrowing won't smooth it out completely.

I live on a farm and am surrounded by farms each farmer has his own method, different as night an day. Some farmers swear by burning stubble, others say it robs the ground of nutrients. It mostly has to do with time and available machinery, if a farmer has more than one tractor he can hire someone to operate and work two fields at once, if he only has one tractor then he is going to have to cut corners in order to get his seed in the ground before the June rains. No till is handy for that, it's one pass and you are seeded and fertilized, but you are still seeding into colder ground and in some places the stubble and chaff is so deep the seed doesn't get buried to the proper depth an fails.

I know it may sound strange to roll ground in order to preserve moisture but the clay ridges lose moisture pretty fast and lentils aren't the most assertive crop you can grow in rotation but they bring in some pretty good coin. Stand up peas don't require as much seed bed preparation and you don't have to set your header so low to pick them up, but the drill rows are pretty rough and can be pretty hard on the trucks.

Just for the sake of being fair I over counted some steps, again how many times you go over the ground depends on the weather, time availability, spring planting or fall planting, equipment failure. There is always a huge X factor in farming. Sometimes you just have to follow your gut. Sometimes you wait to see what your neighbor is doing. Sometimes you spend an extra hour down at the Liars Club talking to other farmers.

The most dust in my experience comes from harrowing, second most comes from seeding, almost no dust is generated from rolling. Harvest is pretty dusty too but it's mostly chaff unless of course you turn your header into a front end loader.

So to make a short story long I counted all the passes over the ground, a spray truck makes no dust, a spray plane makes no dust.

I hope that clears things up a bit, there is no set formula for farming, every year is different.

Dust happens

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The best of men is only a man at best.

I would agree that California's problem is probably driving the call for regulations and I have also never seen a farmer make a pass over a field that he didn't think he needed to do. Laser leveling a field is something, I imagine, that none of you have ever heard of let alone considered.

For the most part, IMO, it appears that most folks are as unfamiliar with what it takes to farm in California as they are with growing tea in China let alone the geography of the Central valley that even makes this an issue in the first place.

Actually, lasers are used here in tiling on a routine basis. We've even advanced enough to have GPS field mapping, yield to the acre monitors, all sorts of modern stuff. Careful, we'll catch up to California if ya'll don't regulate us out of business first!

Many folks voted for a change~! I did not,, and now see what is happening.

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How will manure fit into a no-till system? Will going no-till require that everything be done with chemicals?
Not everyone runs liquid manure that can be knifed in. Leaving solid manure on top of the soil to be washed into the watershed doesn't make much sense.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

Manure's about the only reason I still do any tillage at all, and occasionally some ruts from corn silage that need to be levelled out a bit. You can kind of do it with solid manure and no-till on some ground, but that one pass with a disk and harrows behind it makes things work a lot nicer.

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