Letter to the Editor: Thank you, Liz Rog, for your comments about dandelions and pesticides

(Liz Rog of Decorah wrote a Letter to the Editor recently that thanked homeowners who did not spray chemicals on their lawns to get rid of dandelions.  That has prompted this Letter to the Editor from Mike Rothwell of Burr Oak):

I just read the letter from Liz Rog on dandelions and wanted to thank her for her note!  I also feel strongly about having a natural lawn and landscape.  Living in Burr Oak makes this easier, as more people are like-minded and we're not all out to impress each other with 'perfect' lawns.  I do enjoy mowing and even change directions from time to time for a nice cross-cut pattern to the stripes my lawn mower makes and have noticed my nearby neighbors also beginning to do this.  But that's just mechanical input to a healthy lawn.  By foregoing chemical applications, we all enjoy chemical-free air--our birds are happy and healthy with plenty of fresh, healthy night crawlers to feed on as well as lots of natural flowering beauty from our dandelions!  If I had my way, we would make it illegal to spray them by making the dandelion the official state flower! 
 
When I took ag-business in college many years back I did a report to debunk the myth (that still carries today) about how farmers are the main cause of all the groundwater and runoff water pollution from excessive chemical applications.  As I also was employed by a lawn care company as an application tech for spraying herbicides and pesticides, I had the unique experience of seeing firsthand how those companies operate.  I was aware of chemical volatalization (when temperature would exceed 85 degrees on day of spraying - State of Iowa Core Manual and category 3-OT manuals would recommend against applying these chemicals on days like this due to the vaporizing and non-target drift of these chemicals).  I was also aware of runoff concerns if a storm front was eminent--It would be recommended to not apply because the chemicals would wash off, run off and the application would be for not--but what I saw as an employee and I would bring this up to a supervisor, I would be told to keep working until the storm hit and if we had a call back due to the product not killing a customer's weeds we would just go back and re-apply for no charge.  Long story short here, the commercial suburban chemical companies only care about profits and when living in my old home town of West Des Moines after a thunderstorm, you could literally smell the chemicals in the runoff flooding the streets.  That was all going to the streams, then to the rivers and on down the line.  Add up many cities along a watershed and all these lawn companies with their indiscriminate application practices and there you go.  You have some major accumulation of nitrates, phosphates and other chemicals that are fouling our natural resources in mass abundance.
 
Now to the farmer;  A farmer is paying dearly for properly managed chemical and fertilizer applications.  He is careful to properly calculate every ounce of product and calibrate his equipment for accuracy and is also careful to apply under mainly ideal conditions so that his investment is on target and does exactly what he is paying for to have done.  In addition, a farmer lives on that land.  He isn't wanting to overly contaminate his land or well by not being a good steward and they have the knowledge to do it in no other way than the right way.
 
I made a pie graph chart to show my conclusion in approximately how many pounds of product per acre in a suburban area (lawns, businesses, etc...the 'perfect' lawns) and then input a typical farmer's application of product per acre.  The resulting graph was eye-opening.  It was like 4 percent for ag-land vs. 96 percent suburban.   And then you have the constant re-applications from call backs in town.
 
Later, I bought my own Fimco spray tank and 300-foot electric hose reel and I began a lawn care business on my own.  I charged a fair rate and eventually was doing very well with that.  I explained to my customers when I could and would spray or fertilize their lawns and why and they were always appreciative when I told them the reasons for those times when I couldn't.  I never once had a call back or any insurance claim by off-target application property damage.  However, after doing that for five years,  I got tired of dealing with those chemicals and had bought a property in the country and so began my love of a natural landscape.  It continues today and I am all about mechanical control vs. chemical control. 
 
Final note and perhaps the most important part;  Over the last winter, Iowa State just reported that 60-70 percent of all commercial beehive operations in Iowa collapsed in the last year.  The bees are not only very important pollinators for agricultural commodities, but they also benefit all our flowers, both wild and planted landscapes.  Bees love dandelions and when they are continually encountering these chemicals - there could soon be a time when we would need to manually polinate agri crops by hand or not have crops - not to mention not have HONEY!!   Source on bees:  http://www.kcci.com/news/iowa-just-lost-half-of-its-bees-in-the-past-year/33005122?absolute=true