Spray Plans

Almost all Regional Plans require you to have a property spray plan that is available to neighbours and regional council staff upon request. These will also be inspected by industry auditors.

A property spray plan identifies hazards for planned agrichemical use and details how they will be managed to avoid or minimise any adverse effects on people and the environment from the agrichemicals used. Unlike a spray diary, it is not used to record specific applications.

The plan should include:

• A map showing neighbours and any sensitive areas nearby
• Crops/areas to be sprayed
• The names and types of agrichemicals likely to be used and any specific hazard (e.g. bee toxicity) that may be associated with them
• Times of the year that spraying is likely to occur
• The names and relevant qualifications (e.g. Growsafe certificate) of the people who will be doing the spraying
• Strategies to avoid spray drift on sensitive areas
• Weather conditions that increase potential spray drift hazard.

Sensitive areas include:

• residential areas (e.g. neighbouring houses)
• schools, parks, marae, public roads
• waterways, lakes, wetlands
• neighbouring crops (including organic and greenhouses)
• bee hives.

The plan should also show how you are going to manage any risks - for example:

• contacting any person who may ask to know when spraying is to done
• avoiding contamination of sensitive areas by using large droplet sizes, hand application, not spraying the outside rows, establishing no-spray buffer zones.

Growsafe has a template spray plan you can download and complete/edit. Because property spray plans are a legislative requirement in most regions, many Councils provide information on their interpretation of spray plans in their areas. Growsafe has developed summaries of different regional plan requirements for agrichemicals. These are available from the Resources page of this website. If in doubt about your local rules contact your local council for advice when preparing your plan.