In Washington, D.C., Friday marks National Agriculture Day. While this event is primarily sponsored by and profiles industry heavyweights like the Farm Bureau, Dow AgroSciences and Archer Daniels Midland, Sacramento residents are celebrating in their own way.

“Sacramentans are rebuilding our food system,” said Paul Schramski, State Director of Pesticide Watch. “Facing an increasingly unhealthy food system, and lack of access to more healthy foods, Sacramento residents are embracing a new urban agriculture.”

On any recent weekend, Sacramentans could be found participating in sustainable, urban agriculture. Neighbors in East Sacramento, spearheaded by the Sacramento Urban Fruit Sustainability Fruit Project, harvested fruit from backyards for donation to local foodbanks, while others tended plots with the Sacramento Area Community Gardens. Meanwhile, Soil Born Farms and Oak Park’s Crop Swap are gearing up for new seasons of selling food at farm stands, farmer’s markets, and neighborhood “swaps”.

This scene contrasts dramatically with neighboring industrial agriculture. Just across the Sacramento River, in Yolo County, large-scale farms have begun to spray aerial pesticides for wheat and alfalfa. For the past several days, residents of the Pocket neighborhood have been reporting adverse health effects. “Aerial spraying of the agricultural fields is excessive and I will continue to fight this imminent health risk,” said a resident from the neighborhood who wished to remain anonymous.

Multiple government and scientific research sources including the University of Minnesota and U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, estimate that about 40 percent of an aerial pesticide application leaves the “target area” and that less than 1 percent actually reaches its target. In addition, airborne pesticide drift is responsible for acute poisonings – more than half of agricultural pesticide poisonings reported in California between 1997 and 2000 – and for chronic illnesses including asthma, cancer, neurological disorders, birth defects, miscarriages, and other reproductive effects, according to articles recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Several pieces of statewide legislation, notably The Clean Air for Children, Seniors and Working Families Act (Swanson), as well as two bills recently introduced by Senator Mark Leno and Assemblymember Bill Monning, would challenge industrial agriculture, by creating health-based information and stronger health protections in cases of pesticide exposure.

Meanwhile, Sacramentans are getting some guidance from the Whitehouse in their efforts to create sustainable, urban agriculture. In a New York Times story earlier today, Michelle Obama announced plans to plant an organic vegetable garden on the Whitehouse lawn. Local elected officials have offered similar advice. “As the economic downturn continues, more Sacramentans will look for ways to cut costs. Please consider a vegetable garden. In World War II they were called Victory Gardens. Today the victory should be for pesticide-free growing,” said Sacramento Vice-Mayor Lauren Hammond in an e-mailed statement.

George Davidson is an intern at Pesticide-Free Sacramento, a coalition of civic, health and environmental organizations working to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, the use of pesticides in the Sacramento region.

Photo Courtesy of David Baldridge