By Brad Haire
University of Georgia

Georgia vegetable growers will be allowed to use methyl bromide
for at least one extra year.

Farmers will be allowed to use methyl bromide for squash,
cantaloupe, cucumber, eggplant, pepper, tomato and strawberry in
2005, said Terry Kelley, a horticulturist with the University of
Georgia Extension Service.

Vegetable growers use it to sterilize planting beds before
planting their crops under plastic film.

Except for critical-use exemptions, methyl bromide is slated to
be phased out by the end of 2004. It is being banned by the
Montreal Protocol, a treaty signed by the United States and more
than 160 other countries to control ozone-depleting
substances.

The UGA Extension Service vegetable team helped the Georgia
Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association compile and prepare a
critical use exemption application for methyl bromide. No viable
alternative has been developed, they said, for certain
vegetables.

They submitted the application through the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency to the United Nations Environment Program’s
Methyl Bromide Technical Options Committee. The exemption is for
2005 only.

An application for 2006 has already been submitted.

“This is the most critical thing to the vegetable industry right
now,” Kelley said. “It would certainly change the industry if we
didn’t have methyl bromide.”

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.

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