Changes to impact future pesticide applications

SYCAMORE, Ill. — Farmers are going to experience dramatic changes in the way they will apply pesticides to their crops in the future.

“The Endangered Species Act is something that will fundamentally change how we apply pesticides in Illinois very shortly,” said Aaron Hager, University of Illinois Extension specialist in weed science.

“That is based on what the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has proposed in terms of different practices they feel will bring that agency into compliance with their obligations under the Endangered Species Act,” said Hager during a presentation at the Illinois Crop Management Conference hosted by U of I Extension at the DeKalb County Farm Bureau building in Sycamore.

“Our hope is by the time something is set in stone that it looks nothing like the original proposals,” he said.

One example is the label for the Enlist technology in soybeans.

“That label mandated runoff mitigation practices and you must accumulate four to six points,” Hager said. “It is on a federal label, so that’s the law and you have to do it.”

The U.S. EPA is the agency responsible for registering pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, which was passed in 1972.

“It is a risk benefit statute, so you can’t do anything that will cause unreasonable risk to man or environment, but taking into account the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits,” Hager said.

“The agency can look at the benefits of the registration, and if the analysis says the benefits of registering the pesticide outweigh the risks, the company can bring that product to the marketplace.”

The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973 and it is administered by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“The purpose is to protect threatened and endangered species,” Hager said.

“The big difference between FIFRA and ESA is the ESA says if there’s any risk to a threatened and endangered species or its critical habitat, all the federal agencies have to comply with the Endangered Species Act,” he said.

Typically, Hager said, endangered species will not be growing in a corn or soybean field.

“However, if the endangered specie is growing three miles downstream of the cornfield in a ditch bank, what you’re doing in that field could potentially impact the critical habitat,” he said. “The ecological footprint on a product application may exceed the boundaries of a field.”

More attention has been focused on the Endangered Species Act after comments were made by Jake Li, deputy assistant administrator for pesticide programs at EPA.

“He acknowledged the EPA has ignored its requirements under the ESA for decades,” the weed science specialist said. “So, around 80% of all pesticides were registered not in compliance with the act, so if a court hears a case, the court can vacate a label.”

The regulatory landscape has shifted, Hager said, for companies that are bringing new products to the marketplace or a new use pattern.

“Any change in a use pattern of a product could trigger an Endangered Species Act evaluation,” he said. “And it is easy to file a lawsuit related to the act — any person can file an ESA lawsuit.”

As of October 2022, Hager said, there were over 1,600 listed endangered species by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and of those, close to 60% are plants.

“One active ingredient about to go under reregistration is glyphosate, so there is probably going to be a lot of changes,” he predicted.

The Enlist One and Enlist Duo labels are a good case study of what farmers can expect labels to look like in the future, Hager said.

“The geographic restrictions are what scares a lot of people,” he said. “When these two products were reregistered, people had already made seed purchase decisions, and in Minnesota and Oklahoma, they woke up and couldn’t spray Enlist products, which was all Endangered Species Act related.”

The Enlist label states the land manager or applicator must effectively implement the runoff mitigation measures.

“I don’t think the applicators have the responsibility to do that since probably 60% to 80% of all pesticides are not applied by the farmer in Illinois — this is a custom-application state,” Hager said. “And 77% of the farm ground in Illinois is farmed by someone who does not own the ground.”

In addition to the labels of pesticides, applicators also need to check the “Bulletins Live! Two,” which change and are considered an extension of the label.

“If the product has characteristics that could be jeopardizing an individual species in a limited area, it will go on ‘Bulletins Live! Two,’” Hager said.

“In 2019, there were 27 Illinois counties primarily along the Illinois River that were listed as having one of the species where the buffer had to be extended for dicamba and you had to put in the 57-foot omnidirectional buffer and two years later that number went from 27 to 18,” he said. “Fourteen counties listed in 2019 were no longer listed in 2021, but five counties not listed in 2019 were listed in 2021.”

Hager strongly encourages all farmers to make comments whenever the comment period is open.

“That is your one opportunity to shape how these registration changes are going to happen,” he said.

When making comments, it is important to include specific information about the topic.

“If you say that farmers can not do a particular practice or they can not accumulate the total number of points because of this reason, they will listen to that,” Hager said. “You can also make suggestions and they will read and consider them.”

“The federal government is focused on agricultural crops and conventional pesticides because you’re the biggest user of those technologies,” he said.

“I can’t think of a single example of an endangered specie that has gone extinct directly due to pesticide use,” the specialist said. “If we haven’t caused that in the past and now we have all these new things we have to do, I don’t know what success looks like to the EPA.”