00:00I recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Weed, for five minutes.
00:08There, Mr. Cameron, you grow both organic and conventional crops. Could you further explain what
00:16your experience has been with crop protection tools with both of the production styles?
00:23We find a very limited selection of crop protection tools for organic that actually do the job.
00:30We talked earlier about working with one hand tied behind your back. That is how it feels many times.
00:38We've been able to get good at it. We've been able to hit windows that we don't have the pest pressure
00:45possibly. Weeds are always an issue. We spend a lot of money there, but we're very limited. There
00:52really haven't been a lot of new products coming into the organic market that are very effective.
00:58We're hopeful that there will be with additional biologicals hitting the scene in the future.
01:04Conventional products, we're getting, we're just not getting a lot of new products to use,
01:09and that means we're using older products, older chemistry. We have to worry about resistance
01:14developing. We're extremely careful about rotation of our chemistry when we do make applications,
01:20and we're trying to find ways to do things better and lower our cost.
01:26Thank you. So in recent months and years, there's been a much larger and louder conversation to get
01:31Americans to be healthier and make healthier decisions regarding their food. How do you think
01:37these crop protection tools play a role in increasing American-sourced healthy foods?
01:43You know, I believe that, you know, when I started farming, we used some very tough materials that
01:48would kill everything in the field. We're now using targeted materials that kill only the insect
01:54that's being the problem, leaving the rest of the field, the beneficial insects, to help
02:00continue attacking the ones that do come back. I think the food we produce is extremely healthy.
02:08We've become very good. Our production has gone up. The genetics have improved immensely
02:15in the crops that we do grow, but farming is a difficult operation.
02:22So on that, what driving factors do you use to determine which protection tools you use for your
02:27conventional crops versus your organic crops? I'll start with the organic because that's very limited.
02:34We use, but we do spray our organic crops. We definitely do put crop protection materials on that,
02:41but we're very selective. We use coppers, sulfurs. There are synthetic, or there's actually,
02:49pardon me, natural pyrethroid available that doesn't have the same strength. We rarely use it.
02:56Doesn't work great, but in dire situation, we will try it. We try to have a lot of diversity on our farm.
03:06We find that beneficial insects will switch from field to field and try and actually keep our,
03:12some of the populations down, not only in organic, but in conventional. We've learned a lot of things
03:18in organic production we use in conventional and vice versa. But we are running low on products.
03:26that we can use in organic and conventional farming. We just see the backlog. It affects us directly.
03:36So lastly, I understand the crop protection options for specialty crops are fairly limited compared to
03:42those more traditional row crops we talk about more frequently. How has that impacted your business?
03:47you know, we, we tend to tolerate more possible insect damage. If we don't have the product or a product
03:54that is registered on the crop that we're growing, we may lose yield. Definitely. We typically see a lower
04:03yield in organic crops versus conventional. We grow both side by side, not side by side, but on the same farm.
04:09typically we lose. We, we definitely have a yield loss when we don't have the crop protection chemicals.
04:17Great. Well, thank you all for being here today. With that, I yield back.
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