By Colleen Taber, Administrator, Kern County Farm Bureau
While restrictions continue on gatherings and large educational meetings, Spray Safe and the message of annual preparation for the season remains – Collaborate, Connect and Commit. Local farmers, workers, pest control advisors, and pesticide applicators continue to work together to encourage safe working environments through our annual Spray Safe event. This year’s fourteenth Spray Safe event will welcome our 600 plus attendees on a virtual platform beginning February 2021.
The Spray Safe program was created by a group of farmers in Kern County to encourage the safe application of spray methods through education and farmer to farmer communication and cooperation. Since the program’s inception, it has been implemented in other counties throughout the state. We encourage all members of the agricultural industry to attend and hear from a variety of industry representatives, including the California Department of Pesticide Regulations. With the help of Bakersfield College and CAPCA (California Association of Pest Control Advisors), we are delivering relevant content that will continue to serve our Ag community for years to come.
“Spray Safe continues to be a champion for the safe application of pesticides. The education and contacts which are provided at this event foster an extremely careful and responsible environment that helps to ‘avoid the avoidable’ incidents. Kern is the proud originator of this program which has spread to many other parts of the state,” says Kern County Agricultural Commissioner Glenn Fankhauser.
Recognizing the difficulty faced with inconsistent access to personal devices, computers and internet, the Spray Safe community has created a variety of ways for you/your members/employees to access Spray Safe content this year through https://spraysafeca.com:
Host a Mini-Spray Safe event for your employees or local community members providing content in English and Spanish as well as CDPR CE credit.
Watch online. All course videos plus additional content will be available online starting early February 2021. However, review of these videos on the Spray Safe website will not receive CDPR CE credit.
We would like to thank Bakersfield College, Kern County Department of Agriculture, California Safety Training Corporation, Ag Spray, Sandridge Partners, JSS Almonds, Syngenta, and CAPCA (California Association of Pest Control Advisors).
We encourage you to share this with your growers, members and community stakeholders to help spread the Spray Safe message and opportunity for education in 2021. If you have any questions, are interested in hosting an event, or would like to sponsor the event please call our office at (661)397-9635 or email us at kcfb@kerncfb.com.
