Resources on Pesticide Spray Drift in Regional NSW

The purpose of the SOS strategic plan is to capture the agreed approach and outline the forward plan for SOS Macquarie to enable better spray practices in the Macquarie Valley. It is designed as a set of actions that will bring about practice change in the Macquarie Valley and go on to be used as a template for other irrigation valleys throughout agricultural areas of NSW.

The strategy captures:
Why we care – we want to see sustainable cropping and a safe community.
What we do – we engage with the agricultural community to increase awareness and change practice.
How we do it – our activities are designed to engage and educate to bring about improvements in on-target application efficiency that will reduce spray drift.
The strategy addresses short, medium and long-term goals over a five-year period, with funding available in the first instance to address the short-term objectives.

Thank you to the organisations that helped us shape this strategy through our workshop in Dubbo in June and further consultation on the draft document.

Download the SOS Spray Management Strategy.

As part of our spray management strategy, we undertook a survey to gather information about spraying practices in the Macquarie Valley. To give us a realistic picture, we asked the people who make the decisions about spraying practices on local properties to provide responses to a spray practices survey. The information provided will help us establish a benchmark of the knowledge of local growers and sprayers and current practices.

The survey was administered on behalf of the SOS committee by an independent research consultancy, instinct and reason. All of instinct and reason’s research is conducted under the Market and Social Research Privacy Code, which ensures confidentiality of information.

Here’s a summary of the initial results.
Benchmark Survey

Spray advisors workshop 2018

• Video 1
• Video 2

• Early morning inversion practical demonstration
• Daytime conditions after the inversion breaks
• Summer Weed Control Best Practice Guide by Mary O’Brien – read online | 3-fold printable brochure
• Weather Essentials for Pesticide Application by Graeme Tepper
• Surface temperature inversions and spraying – GRDC Fact Sheet
• Weather monitoring equipment for agricultural spraying operations – GRDC Fact Sheet
• Spray Application Manual edited by Bill Gordon (Module 10 covers Weather Monitoring for Spray Applications)
• Spraywise – 24 Hour Inversion Decision Wheel