Grassley, Colleagues Discuss Pesticide Registration Struggles with EPA Administrator

WASHINGTON – This week, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Roger Marshall, M.D. (R-Kan.) participated in a call with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael Regan to discuss recent decisions that will restrict farmers’ access to safe and necessary crop protection products.

The EPA has issued several decisions that will hinder farmers’ ability to control weeds and pests which can cripple plants and severely undermine crop yields – adversely impacting farmers’ ability to efficiently and effectively produce the commodities that feed the world.

“Crop protection products play a crucial role in food production, yet they are a common target of the Biden administration,” the senators said in a joint statement following the meeting. “These products are essential for farmers to leave their land and world cleaner, healthier and safer than they found it. As such, we must keep up the fight for our farmers so they have access to affordable pesticides and herbicides. If the EPA restricts some of the most widely used and basic weed and pest control products, then our food production will be set back decades and will all but eliminate agriculture’s ability to store carbon in our soil. EPA has been working on several registration-related items in the pesticides office dealing with dicamba, glyphosate, chlorpyrifos, and the triazine herbicides – but we don’t think the EPA is sufficiently engaged with USDA, the registrants and growers to fully understand what the implications of those decisions can be.”

The EPA has made several decisions this last year that will have a dramatic impact on Iowa’s agriculture industry:

Last November, the EPA issued new Biological Evaluations (BEs) for glyphosate, atrazine and simazine that vastly inflate the number of species and habitats found likely to be adversely impacted by these much-needed herbicides. Crop growers have sought to provide the agency with better, real-world data sources, including in comments on the draft BEs — but the EPA failed to incorporate these comments into their final BE.

On December 21, 2021, EPA put out an unrequired, seemingly random report tallying up the “increased number of drift complaints” of dicamba from last growing season. Dicamba is a widely-used herbicide necessary for controlling weeds.

Last August, in response to a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling, the EPA made a stunning decision to revoke all food tolerances and stop the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos – rather than simply modify the tolerance.

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