News

Farmer says additional restrictions move the goalposts for farmers

The American Soybean Association is expressing concern following the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement it is tightening restrictions on the registration of Glufosinate-P. Alan Meadows, a Tennessee farmer and ASA director, says the Agency imposed additional Endangered Species Act restrictions on farmers. “We’re trying to hit a moving target,” he says. 

Registration for Glufosinate-P was announced on October 18, but EPA was slow to release the final label for the registration, and when the final label was publicly posted, ASA says additional, unwarranted restrictions were evident.

Meadows says the draft registration made sense.  “And then when the EPA came back with all these others, it’s like, man, what’s going on here and that’s,” he says.  “That’s really what we’re trying to figure out is what is going on here.”

He tells Brownfield there were significant changes from the draft registration to the final registration. “It went to a 50-foot downwind buffer for aerial application, and also they put in a 10-foot buffer for ground applications, which they had previously said, you know, we’re not necessary for the draft registration,” he says. “Then they went from, let’s say, one point that you had to get up to three points from reducing runoff.” 

Meadows says the organization and its members are concerned that the EPA will deviate from its own strategies and add additional restrictions instead of implementing a science-based regulatory system. “It feels like some of this stuff is getting so restricted that we’re just fighting tooth and nail to be able to use it,” he says. “That is probably my biggest fear. Do we continue to have access to these products that we need?”

This was the first new herbicide registration following the finalization of the EPA’s Herbicide Strategy. 

AUDIO: Alan Meadows, American Soybean Association