David Brodeur at the California Department of Food and Agriculture

I worked as an intern with the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Office of Pesticide Consultation and Analysis (OPCA). Fellow EPM student Jake Whealen and I jointly completed an economic and policy analysis on the subject of installing vegetative buffers along agricultural fields to mitigate pesticide drift near sensitive populations. Our analysis included three areas: a literature review of pesticide health effects and vegetative buffer effectiveness in drift reduction, cost estimates of implementing a vegetative buffer program in Kern County, CA, and policy proposals for a potential program. We used GIS and R programming tools to map agriculture fields with certain parameters and identify fields near schools, hospitals, and nursing homes which would be eligible for vegetative buffers under the proposed program. Using these identified fields we estimated the total cost of installing vegetative buffers to mitigate harmful pesticide drift. Jake and I presented our work and findings to the OPCA office along with our final deliverable report. It was rewarding to work with a state agency on a project using skills in R, GIS, and policy analysis gained through classes.