While November may be best known as the month for roasted turkeys and cranberry sides, it’s also National Banana Pudding Lovers Month. This unusual designation made us nostalgic for a past project involving bananas in Costa Rica. Spanning multiple years, we can say that our work on this project has helped make banana pudding a more environmentally friendly indulgence.

Between 1995 and 1999, Waterborne was asked to help the Banana Company / Agricultural Chemical Company Industry's “Banana Task Force” work in Costa Rica. Comprised of the industry’s biggest names, including Chiquita, Dole, and Del Monte, the Banana Task Force promoted worker safety, conducted insect surveys, and looked at ways to reduce pesticides in waterways. The last is how Waterborne became involved as we were tasked with exploring the use of fate and transport models to evaluate the potential for agricultural chemicals to move to non-target environments associated with their use in banana production.

Waterborne’s  modeling overview and results of work with the Banana Task Force was presented at the “1998 International Conference on Pesticide Use in Developing Countries: Impact on Health and Environment. However, before modeling, we were careful to review the banana industry’s current production methods and paths. From there, we designed model scenarios to assess the relative benefits achieved from both currently employed and other potentially viable agricultural management practices in reducing chemical drift and runoff to adjacent and downstream receiving water bodies. The management practices we evaluated included structural and non-structural measures such as vegetative buffer strips, aquatic biofilters, and chemical application techniques.

For simulation models, we tapped PRZM, a terrestrial dissipation model developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to address chemical washoff, runoff, and leaching; FSCBG, a drift model developed by Continuum Dynamics to simulate spray drift from chemical applications to forested areas; and finally, RBUFF and RIVWQ, which were both developed at Waterborne to evaluate runoff buffers and chemical degradation and transport in receiving waters. The influences of climate and hydrological variability on chemical transport were also presented.