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EPA releases draft insecticide strategy

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a draft insecticide strategy which will serve as a framework to bring insecticides into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

Ag Retailers Association CEO Daren Coppock says this is the second in a series of strategies EPA is putting out.

“This strategy, the herbicide strategy and the ones coming forward on rodenticides and fungicides are really important, because the portfolio is vulnerable from a legal standpoint. If we don’t find a way to improve the compliance, we’ll be at risk of losing some products. And we just can’t afford that risk.”

He says ARA is still reviewing the more than 100-page proposal.

The American Soybean Association says this insecticide strategy would impose a series of mitigations for farmers to adopt to protect endangered species from pesticide exposures. EPA would require farmers to select from a list of runoff reduction measures to implement. However, unlike previous proposals, EPA might require farmers in areas with endangered insects to adopt on-field mitigations to protect the listed species.

Coppock says the EPA is trying to provide flexibility where they can as they piece together these strategies.

“They’re trying to give producers a broad array of options of practices farmers can use.”

The Center for Biological Diversity, a conservation activist group that’s challenged the EPA’s compliance with the ESA in a federal court, says it’s good to see the strategy, but they want the EPA to stand strong against inevitable attacks by Big Ag, which now attacks all efforts to enact reasonable protections against endangered species.

The deadline to submit comments for the proposal is September 23. Click here for more details.