Soy growers disappointed, wary of expected impacts from US EPA's final herbicide strategy

With the release of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s final Endangered Species Act Herbicide Strategy comes ongoing concerns for soy growers worried about feasibility of implementation and its impacts.

Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association and a soybean farmer from North Dakota, said of the final ESA Herbicide Strategy, ″While there are clear improvements to the final Herbicide Strategy over what was first proposed, we are disappointed EPA chose to leave so many opportunities on the table to make this strategy workable for U.S. agriculture. We remain concerned with the complexity of this framework and whether growers and applicators will be able to clearly understand how to implement it. Likewise, we continue to have concerns as to the type and affordability of runoff mitigations EPA has provided, the potential distance of spray drift buffers, the number of mitigations farmers will need to adopt, and whether these requirements are supported by the best available science, as the law requires. As finalized, the Herbicide Strategy is likely to cost U.S. farmers billions of dollars to implement and could result in significant new hurdles to farmers accessing and using herbicides in the future.″

Another significant improvement EPA largely has not addressed is how the agency evaluates whether pesticides pose a genuine risk to endangered species. As ASA and over 300 other groups noted in a letter to EPA several weeks ago, the agency’s current process is unduly conservative, greatly overestimates risks, and demands farmers adopt far more restrictions than are truly necessary to protect species. Disappointingly, the final Herbicide Strategy does little to address these concerns. As requested in our letter, we hope EPA will take us up on our invitation to discuss this central piece of its ESA regulations in the days ahead.

Gackle concluded, ″While we appreciate the Herbicide Strategy restrictions will not take effect immediately and that EPA plans to implement them in individual pesticide registration decisions moving forward, ASA will carefully observe how closely EPA adheres to its strategy in those proposed decisions. While we support EPA becoming compliant with the Endangered Species Act, it is essential that the agency’s approach meets its legal obligations and is workable for agriculture. The final Herbicide Strategy does not satisfy these needs. We look forward to continuing to work with EPA to do better in the next phase of implementation.″