Community demands advance warning before pesticides sprays.

After they’re applied to fields, pesticides can and do drift, with droplets and dust traveling beyond their applied boundaries and sometimes causing accidental exposure. That’s why farmworkers, activists and some local politicians are pushing county agricultural commissioners statewide to post online in advance, before pesticides are applied on the fields.

Greenfield City Councilmember Yanely Martinez says that as a mom of a kid with asthma, she wants to know before pesticides are applied near her home or her child’s school. “It’s not going to take money, it’s not going to take time,” Martinez says. “Our biggest wall that we keep on hitting is our commissioners not wanting to do their job.”

The cities of Watsonville, Greenfield and Soledad as well as Pajaro Valley Unified and Greenfield Union school districts have passed symbolic resolutions urging ag commissioners to post online about upcoming pesticide applications.

Monterey County Agricultural Commissioner Henry Gonzales was not available for an interview before the Weekly’s deadline.

In Monterey County, advance notice is provided to 10 schools when pesticides will be sprayed within a quarter-mile, but it’s a distance local advocates say isn’t enough. Ann Aurelia Lopez, executive director of the Center for Farmworker Families, says among the farmworker community many kids have autism, cancer and learning disabilities and respiratory illnesses. She says knowing about upcoming pesticide sprays will give residents options, like closing their windows or leaving the area temporarily. “The way it is now, there’s no choice,” she says. “It’s all done in secret.”