TULARE, Calif. — Deteriorating air quality in the San Joaquin Valley is bringing tougher pollution controls for the region's farmers, which in turn is creating a growing market for environmentally friendly farm equipment.
Struggling to comply with the new rules, farmers are turning to innovative products and methods such as almond harvesters that kick up less dust, wood chippers as alternatives to burning orchard prunings and tractors steered by satellite-based global positioning systems to reduce the use of fuel, pesticides and fertilizers.
Even the venerable equipment maker Deere & Co. will come out with a line of more fuel-efficient, less polluting John Deere tractors this year, in part because of California's increasingly stringent regulations.
Farm equipment -- An article in Saturday's Business section on environmentally friendly farming machines described Tillage International's Optimizer as weighing 50,000 tons. It weighs 50,000 pounds.
"What happens in California percolates across the country, even in agriculture," said Craig Weynand, Deere's Western sales office branch manager.
Air quality has become a vexing issue for the valley, which health officials say has one of the highest asthma rates in the nation. In response, the state Legislature removed the air pollution exemption for farms in 2003.
What's more, since December, growers must submit plans for controlling dust to the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District. And farms that emit more than 12.5 tons per year of certain smog-producing chemicals have to obtain permits from the district, which has missed multiple federal deadlines for cleaning up air pollution in the region.
Starting in June, there will be a prohibition on burning orchard prunings and other agricultural waste related to several dozen major crops, including peaches, plums and citrus fruit.
The new rule sent sales of wood chippers, which chop up trees into tiny pieces of mulch, up 10% last year at Cal-Line Equipment Inc. in Livermore, said Bruce Bartling, a company spokesman.
"But we think the real impact will be later this year when the restrictions tighten," he added.
Cotton grower Cannon Michael is one farmer who has already made a sizable investment in environmental cleanup. His Bowles Farming Co. is using a new 45-foot long, 50,000-ton farm implement known as the Optimizer, which reduces the number of passes that tractors have to make through his fields near Los Banos.
