A Lawn Care Roundtable: Industry Roundtable

Increasing political pressure and environmental sentiment in the nation’s capital and various state capitals has led to the loss of two popular pesticides - chlorpyrifos and diazinon - despite contractors’ and manufacturers’ repeated claims about the safety of these products. At the same time, New York shocked the industry last summer by passing a bill requiring prenotification for customers abutting a property that was about to receive a lawn care application.

To get a field-level perspective of the issues challenging lawn care operators businesses, Aventis Environmental Science/Chipco Professional Products, Montvale, N.J., and Lawn & Landscape magazine sponsored by a two-day industry roundtable that included nearly two dozen of the industry’s leading minds. Here is an excerpt of the conversation that took place.

How is the political climate going to impact the industry?

SAM LANG, Fairway Green - "I think we’re in trouble. We’re going to lose so many of our products. What we’re seeing is a big focus on nutrient fate, and pesticides will come right behind that. That’s going to shape what products we have left to lose. People are building housing in old farmlands and finding atrazine contamination in wells. So now we have to have buffers of 50 feet on each side of a stream.

"We’re funding a huge, nutrient fate study at North Carolina State University, and a pesticide study is going to be next. The Turfgrass Council of North Carolina tracked nitrogen through all turf uses, and with radioisotopes you can tell what nitrogen came off each setting. The initial results show that the turfgrass system is almost 100 percent efficient. Apply 1 pound of nitrogen and you’ll recover 2 pounds of nitrogen through clippings. We’re trying to see if there is a problem with pesticides and how they move through turf in lawn care and golf.

"They’ve got us under the gun. Everyone who pushes a spreader has to go through nutrient certification through the department of natural resources vs. dept. of agriculture. We see this nutrient fate coming to the other states. They’re writing up the first data right now. The question is what happens when the system gets totally loaded - where does the nitrogen go? For right now, we can’t apply any more nitrogen than what is recommended by N.C. State."

JOHN BUECHNER, Lawn Doctor - "What’s alarming to me is that no one on fertilizer manufacturing side seems to be showing any concern about this issue. The Fertilizer Institute should also jump on board."

LANG - "That’s true. This study is costing us $1 million, and the fertilizer manufacturers aren’t the ones funding it."

BILL HOOPES, Scotts Lawn Service - "Do you think we’re pressuring RISE to help this end of the business. But why would RISE be motivated on the specialty pesticide way?"

BUECHNER - "Combination products maybe? Fifteen years ago, things were the same way. We’re not under siege, we’re still under siege. We’ve gone from splashy stories to Ph.D.s working with ludicrous default assumptions through FQPA. Now the whole game is that all they have to do is show presence with this 10x assumption. I don’t want to argue about the fate of pesticides being next, but to me, it’s a done deal. All the fate study is going to show is that pesticides are there and they don’t have to show any harm."

TOM TOLKACZ, Swingle Tree & Landscape Care - "The techniques of the warfare are different because the strategy used to be a media issue, taking pesticide concerns in front of our customers with the perception that doing so would hurt us. But we realized that really didn’t hurt us. We probably ended up being better communicators with our customers in the end.

"Now, the technique is votes. However, getting legislators to believe in us, our cause and sound science isn’t working because they’re all chasing votes."

KEITH BURRELL, The Lawn Co. - "In Massachusetts, they package legislation as the children’s and family protection act. Then you get the activist groups out there knocking on the doors. There’s no correlation to what is really going on in the field, but legislators won’t touch the issue because they can’t vote against an act to protect children and families."

TOLKACZ - "When you talk about votes, we’re having some presence. In Colorado, when we had city bills going forward, RISE brought money and expertise to the table to deal with state preemption. But how well do we as an industry communicate how many votes we carry? In Colorado, we showed that the green industry has more votes than the ski industry, and that hit home and got us a place at the table. Maybe that has to be our issue."

LANG - "We update our economic impact survey every five years in North Carolina. We got all of the industry personnel in there together - turf, nursery stock and so on. The survey shows that the industry employs 120,000 people in our state, and they can do the math from there. There needs to be one clearinghouse to get everyone together for the industry.

"When I see what happens in New York with posting and prenotification, I worry about that running downhill to us. The Sierra Club has been very successful in its lobbying, so we need to be prepared. One of the most important ways to do that is with money."

TOLKACZ - "The other thing is that it’s awesome to have legislative events, but I find that we as an industry do an extremely poor job of getting our employees out to vote. That’s another issue we could drive home, and that could even mean changing your routes for a day."

HOOPES - "How would we set up a national clearinghouse?"

LANG - "It has to be a joint effort with Golf Course Superintendents Association of America because they have such a high visibility even though they are only 2 percent of North Carolina’s managed turf. Then add in ALCA and PLCAA. But this has to be done because they’re picking us off one at a time."

GARY CLAYTON, All Green - "We have to recognize that the battlefield is not good science. The battle is the political endeavors. We’ve tried to incorporate GCSAA and ALCA, but the effort has always been too fractionalized. The perception is that there’s not enough commonality among the different groups. Everyone’s too busy, there’s a lack of money and the list goes on. There are too many tight circles that aren’t touching each other"

LANG - "We have to get farmers included because they apply pesticides. What we’re talking about is a full-time job, but we can’t let this keep happening because what happened in New York really shocked me."

TOLKACZ - "RISE is structured as a clearinghouse. Every state association should be getting communication from them. If you aren’t, don’t blame RISE. Blame the association because the manufacturers are supportive and they’re the force behind RISE."

CLAYTON - "Our opponent is much more focused than we are."

GARY CHAMBERLIN, TruGreen-ChemLawn - "This may be slightly contrary to the point, but what works well is having a very strong state organization. In Ohio, Ohio Pesticide Applicators for Responsible Regulation is one of the best going."

LANG - "RISE or whoever needs to look at each state and see if they are prepared and organized for negative legislation. In New York, I think they weren’t ready."

TIM DOPPEL, Atwood Lawn Care - "It all goes back to the idea of being under siege. The strategy of a siege is to wear people down. In Michigan, we can’t get anyone excited about these issues because business is good and our customers don’t care. They’ve been beaten down to the point that they don’t see a problem. What’s the issue when business is great?"

HOOPES - "They’re reactive instead of being proactive."

LANG - "The problem is that it will cost you $10 to stop something and $10,000 to unscrew it."

DOPPEL - "How do we get the word out?"

DARYLE JOHNSON, All-American Turf Beauty - "As long as we’re asking the public about the important issues and public says the environment, then all we’re doing is putting out fires. We have to change the paranoia about pesticides. I talked to a local fourth grade class a couple of years ago and those kids thought I was a devil. We need to get the facts out there, and I fault the pesticide companies and everyone in the industry

"We’ve hired a turfgrass information coordinator in Iowa to get the information out there. We put up $30,000 a year for three years to fund this position. His job is to communicate the benefits of turf to the public instead of fighting the negative news. The Sierra Club has someone in every state - why doesn’t the turf industry?"

BURRELL - "It’s amazing to explain reality to them and see the looks on their face as they realize the truth. We have to lay the groundwork ahead of time before there is a crisis or else people won’t come to you for information and then they won’t trust you."

GARY LASCALEA, GroGreen - "All of these issues started locally. In the 1980s, sign posting started in Maryland, but the Sierra Club and Rachel Carson had plenty of people. Those groups wanted pre-notification at that time and they wanted us to use much larger signs than what we ended up using. We were able to get involved to some degree and get those signs reduced."

BUECHNER - "It’s just hard to get other lawn care professionals involved in issues. They don’t know enough to be concerned, but yet it impacts their life."

TOLKACZ - "The issue in front of us is that the issues have gotten so complicated with FQPA and the Risk Cup that people don’t understand them. When the lawn care hearings were going on, we were able to get people there pretty easily because we saw how it was going to impact our business."

LANG - "But we all started a business, put a struc-ture together, went out and marketed and built up a customer base. Why can’t we do it now? If we took this same attitude we’re taking here with our businesses we all would have failed."

JIM CAMPANELLA, The Lawn Dawg - "Such an effort has to start locally, which is where we haven’t been very organized. Legislators trust the people in the middle like us more than Sierra on one end and RISE on the other end."

HOOPES - "I don’t think we sound like we can’t do, but we sound like we don’t know how to do it. We have a tremendous story if we can just get the communications vehicle going."

TOLKACZ - "I do this with an MSDS sheet for table salt, which requires you to wear goggles and rubber gloves when you use it."

LANG - "This needs to happen soon. We can’t mess around for two or three more years. How many more states will be picked off by that time?"

BUECHNER - "Historically, New York is not a pesticide-friendly state. It’s the only state that requires customer contracts. To this date, we still don’t have guidance on how to administer that law. I’m not sure anyone really knows what happened there, but it’s a very fractionalized state with Nassau/Suffolk, the upstate area and the New York State Lawn Care Association (NYSLCA) in the western part of the state, and they have never really worked together.

"What worked together were the breast cancer concerns, and I firmly believe the culmination of this was that 2000 was an election year. There was a lot of legislative effort and we were feeling pretty confident. We didn’t even think this was going to come up for a vote even a week before the vote. At this point, the NYSLCA has put out a position paper and taken some action, established an 800-number to educate the county legislators, and we think we’re having some effect. Even though the pre-notification was passed, it’s still up to the individual counties to pass. This law also excludes granular products, so you can bet there will be a lot of companies going the granular route."

DOPPEL - "The amazing thing is that my customers don’t care. We’ll still grow."

CHAMBERLIN - "At the same time, our customers think there is a risk with what we do. They keep the kids and dogs off the lawns whenever we’re around."

DOPPEL - "We get a fair amount of interest in our non-pesticides program, then we go over the costs and expected results with them and about 98 percent of the time they go with the pesticides and just tell us to be careful."

HOOPES - "Organic is a nice sounding word until customers realize they’re going to have weeds."

BURRELL - "We really promoted a natural program in our newsletter and on our trucks, and we might have added 50 customers."

Trey Webster, Davey Tree - "Our customers always trust what we’re doing. It’s the neighbor of our customer who causes the problems."

BUECHNER - "In New York, I think some people will look at this as an opportunity. A lot of companies will figure out how to do this and some will just subcontract their work out. We could go granular, but we just won’t kill broadleaf weeds as well."

TOLKACZ - "When the issues were hot in the media, we took a bunch of our tree spraying over to natural controls and people cancelled so fast because the results just weren’t there. They just don’t want beetle larvae dropping on their patios."

TOLKACZ - "Our reaction is to the neighbors of our customers. From a product standpoint, one of the major concerns we have is the lack of residual. I know this is a response to what’s going on, but our clients are realizing that it will take five visits to do what we used to do with three with what we felt was a safe product. This isn’t a resistance issue as much as it is a residual issue. Our ornamental applications will increase as well, and that means we’ll be putting more in the risk cup. We’ll probably make more money long term, but I don’t know if that’s a good thing.

"We also have to work more with the universities because the students coming out of schools hate pesticides. There isn’t any good pesticide education anywhere at the collegiate level. That’s a real struggle for us with recruiting. Kids coming out of these schools don’t want to handle pesticides."

HOOPES - "There’s a real dichotomy going on because these kids coming out and get rich and buy their house on Mortgage Hill and then they get grubs and hire us. But they don’t want to apply pesticides at all."