As I drive down my local road past all the shelter belts hiding kiwifruit orchards on my way to have my latest round of chemotherapy I also ponder, like T Kapai, Sun 30 Sept, the effects of passive poisoning downwind of crops being sprayed by agri chemicals.
The effect of hi cane on my intended retirement income of 200 acacia melanoxyns is startlingly obvious. They are burnt and bent specimens, no use for timber and now of little use to me other than a thin barrier between the direct line of spray and my home citrus orchard. Someone made the comment recently that acacia melanoxyns would be a good tree to plant near kiwifruit orchards to detect spray drift, it certainly shows the drift at my place.
The sooner orchardists realise that shelter belts are shelter belts and not spray barriers the better.
All the talk about new nozzles and improved safety practices seems to have bypassed my part of the world, spray damage the same as every year.
What amazes me is somehow it is my fault.
I have been threatened, patronised, ignored and insulted by orchardists and admit I cannot feel sorry about the PSA infection. As the grower at a recent Katikati meeting was quoted as saying, ‘it is nature biting us in the bum'.
Yes, nature does have a way of having the last word, but what a shame this areas total desperation for a quick dollar has given us not a Bay of Plenty but a Bay of Dis-Ease.
Margaret Parker, Pahoia.