By Brad Haire
University of Georgia

The United States has been officially granted a one-year
reprieve from a United Nations program set to phase out the use
of methyl bromide. This is good news to the Georgia vegetable
growers who depend on the fumigant to grow many of their
crops.

Farmers in Georgia can keep using methyl bromide for squash,
cantaloupe, cucumber, eggplant, pepper, tomato and strawberry
production in 2005, said Terry Kelley, a horticulturist with the
University of Georgia Extension Service.

Vegetable growers use it to sterilize planting beds covered in
plastic. This is an essential first step in controlling many
devastating weeds and diseases before planting their crops.

The United States and 11 other countries were granted the
critical-use exemption March 26, when international envoys met
to discuss the issue in Montreal. The issue was discussed in
Kenya last fall but wasn’t resolved.

Phase out

Except for exemptions, methyl bromide is slated to be phased out
of production Jan. 1, 2005. The U.N. Environmental Program hopes
to completely phase out its use by 2015. The program is
authorized by the Montreal Protocol, a treaty signed by the
United States and more than 180 other countries to control ozone-
depleting substances.

The United States will be permitted to produce 7,659 tons of
methyl bromide in 2005. This totals about 30 percent of what was
permitted in 1991, the last year before the phase-out began.

“Without this critical-use exemption, we would have been left
only with the existing stockpiles,” Kelly said. “But they have
declined over the past decade and would unlikely last beyond the
early-planting (2005) season.”

The Environmental Protection Agency determines how much methyl
bromide each state can use. Georgia hasn’t been told, yet, how
much it will be allowed to use in 2005.

Essential exemption

Without the exemption, Kelley said, it would be questionable
whether Georgia farmers could grow certain vegetables, such as
eggplants and peppers.

Georgia vegetable growers have already cut back on the amount of
methyl bromide they use. But if they had to stop using it cold
turkey, Kelley said, they’d lose $120 million in annual
production.

The exemption is for 2005 only. The UGA Extension Service
vegetable team has already helped the Georgia Fruit and
Vegetable Growers Association prepare and submit a critical-use
exemption for 2006.

“The methyl bromide phase-out is one of the most critical issues
facing the vegetable industry right now,” Kelley said. “It would
certainly change Georgia’s vegetable industry if we didn’t have
methyl bromide to use in the immediate future.”

UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
researchers and others across the country are trying to develop
effective, economical ways to replace the things methyl bromide
does so completely for vegetable growers. But it isn’t easy.

Farmers will have to put alternatives to use in the near future.
The price of methyl bromide has tripled in the past decade,
Kelley said. So its economic appeal to farmers will begin to
wear off.

Georgia’s vegetable crop is worth about $680 million annually.