Farmworker advocates hoped huge reforms were on the horizon in January, when Gov. Mike Easley appointed a task force on preventing pesticide exposure.

But as the legislative session winds down, lawmakers have funded only a handful of the reforms that the task force suggested to keep the state's tens of thousands of farmworkers from being exposed to toxic chemicals. Lawmakers budgeted just over $350,000 for pesticide initiatives, less than a quarter of the $1.6 million the task force recommended.

"It's a little sliver of what's needed," Fawn Pattison, head of the anti-pesticide group Toxic Free N.C., said of the legislature's action. "But I think it's the best that was possible in this atmosphere in the legislature, which is dominated by business."

The task force's recommendations were a response to the state's case against tomato grower Ag-Mart, which is accused of forcing its employees to work in fields with freshly sprayed pesticides. Some workers allege the exposures caused birth defects in their babies.

Ag-Mart employs several hundred field hands at its farm in Brunswick County. The state Department of Agriculture fined Ag-Mart in 2005, and Ag-Mart's attorneys are now fighting the state in Wake Superior Court.

The money in this year's budget will only partly address the problems that have made it difficult for the state to punish Ag-Mart.

It will allow the state to continue tracking pesticide poisoning cases, a program that was run for the past year with federal funding. It will also fund the positions of two new state employees who will train farmworkers on proper pesticide use.

A separate bill, passed last week, will enact a few reforms that address the Ag-Mart case more directly. The company is accused of firing one worker who talked to state pesticide investigators. The company also recorded only approximate times when pesticides were applied, making it difficult to know when it was safe for workers.

The bill outlaws retaliation against employees who complain about pesticide violations. It also strengthens record-keeping requirements for farms that use pesticides, insisting that they log the exact times of application and keep records for two years.

State Health Director Leah Devlin, who headed the task force, said that the reforms were less than the group's members wanted but that they are still significant improvements.

Workers didn't get the right to complain about pesticide violations confidentially. And the state didn't address a pesticide regulation that has hamstrung the state as it attempts to go after Ag-Mart. The law says that a violation of pesticide violation must be "willful" to warrant punishment; Ag-Mart has claimed it was ignorant of the law and therefore can't be fined for violating it.