Farmers must be registered as a professional user to apply pesticides by any spray-based means by 26 November. To register, the sprayer operator must have received some specific training in the past. If not, then a current sprayer operator course must be completed.

People must be registered as a professional user to apply agrochemicals through any type of sprayer, from a wide boom sprayer or orchard sprayer to a handheld or knapsack sprayer. For anyone purchasing chemicals from the end of next month, a cross-compliance inspection will ask how these products were applied, who applied them and where.

It was initially stated that a separate course had to be completed for a boom and knapsack sprayer. However, the Department is now saying that any operator who has completed a training course for boom sprayer application, either recently or in the past, will be deemed to be appropriately trained to apply chemicals on his/her own land. But this is only for own-land application.

This means that most farmers will only have to do the boom sprayer course to be compliant, and for those that have this completed it will enable them to be a professional user for both boom and handheld spray application. However, anyone who has completed a handheld course only, is not deemed to be trained to use a boom sprayer.