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Professor Tyrone B. Hayes of the University of California at Berkeley will talk at the annual meeting of the Sustainable Farming Association of Southeast Minnesota. Hayes also will speak April 8 at Saint Mary's University.
Hayes' talk Saturday is titled "From silent spring to silent night: Pesticides, amphibian decline and what it means to us."
Vic Ormsby, a farming association member in Winona, said Hayes' research is an appropriate topic as some farmers step away from conventional methods.
"We have to realize that there's more cost to this form of agriculture than we have previously acknowledged," he said. "We need to realize we have had an adverse impact on the environment."
The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency last fall canceled Hayes' keynote speech on atrazine scheduled for a conference this month. The agency asked Hayes to downplay the word atrazine and he refused. A Minneapolis Star Tribune story showed some state officials deemed a spotlight on atrazine to be politically risky.
Atrazine was first registered for use in the United States in 1958, and has since been "one of the most heavily used herbicides in Minnesota," the state Department of Agriculture said. The EPA says it is widely detected in surface and groundwater.
Companies sell it under about 30 trade names. Several European countries have banned Atrazine and the World Health Organization classifies it as a Type 2B carcinogen, suspected of causing cancer.
Hayes' laboratory study, co-authored with five other researchers and published in the fall of 2002, used leopard frogs collected from a Wisconsin marsh. He exposed developing eggs to atrazine with replication and controls.
The tests used extremely low levels of atrazine — 0.1 part per billion — one-thirtieth of the limit for drinking water set by the Environmental Protection Agency. The frogs developed multiple sex organs, and males developed as females, Hayes results showed.
Syngenta AG of Switzerland, a major manufacturer of atrazine, criticized Hayes research even though it initially wanted to fund it. Syngenta held a press conference in Minnesota last month as the atrazine controversy enflamed. The Legislature is considering banning the chemical.
Ormsby said when agriculture plays such a large role in a state's economy, like it does in Minnesota, officials and politicians are hesitant to disparage it.
"I think agriculture tends to be a sacred cow in our culture and any criticism of the technologies that are used tends to bring a storm of protest," he said.
Reporter Jeff Dankert can be reached at (507) 453-3513, or e-mail: jdankert@winonadailynews.com.
