By Todd Neeley
DTN Staff Reporter
OMAHA (DTN) -- Bayer CropSciences' decision to drop its fight to keep Belt SC insecticide on the market comes at a time when one Midsouth entomologist said farmers can ill-afford to lose another weapon to fight pests.
University of Arkansas entomologist Gus Lorenz said it was a particularly difficult pest season in the Midsouth states of Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas and Missouri.
Supplies of Belt SC insecticide, the trademark name for Bayer's insecticide flubendiamide, will be allowed to run out after the company announced last week it dropped its appeal of a decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cancel the product. Belt is used in the Midsouth to control caterpillar pests in soybeans, among other uses. Belt's registration was cancelled because EPA said the company had not met all the requirements of the product's conditional registration.
"For us this year it was a record-breaking year for caterpillar pests, corn ear worm, and loopers (on soybeans) at the end of the season," Lorenz told DTN. "All pests we see have resistance issues with other insecticides. Prevathon (DuPont), Besiege (Syngenta) and Belt are the three big products we relied on for control."
Prevathon, Besiege and Belt are classified as diamides. Lorenz said the loss of Belt leaves him concerned about how long the remaining diamides are going to be effective.
Jeffrey Donald, senior external communications manager at Bayer, told DTN the process followed by EPA on Belt was "unprecedented, but one we felt was important enough to see through to the end of the regulatory appeals process."
Bayer said in a blog post, http://bit.ly/…, last week it had explored all of its options and was satisfied with its challenge to EPA's environmental appeals board.
In August, Bayer lost its appeal of the EPA's decision to pull the conditional registration for Belt. The agency's appeals board allowed distributors and retailers to distribute and sell remaining Belt inventories.
Donald told DTN the company believes it would have had a less-favorable result had it pursued its case in federal court.
Bayer continues to have concerns about rising input costs and what the loss of products such as Belt will mean to farmers.
"The loss of flubendiamide is a blow to U.S. farmers who have come to rely on Belt as a critical tool in their pest management program," Donald said.
"The irony of the decision is hurts farmers by removing an important tool and limiting choice which would result in higher input costs or the use of more disruptive technologies. The lepidopteran insects, which Belt was particularly effective at targeting, are an important research target and Bayer continues to invest into basic research across all major indications."
Conditional registrations are essentially agency approvals to sell a pesticide if certain conditions are met. EPA officials asked Bayer in early February to voluntarily cancel the 2008 conditional registration for the pesticide flubendiamide. The company refused and the agency moved to cancel anyway.
In the blog post last week, Bayer said dropping its pursuit of either an appeal or to completely re-register the product was the best decision for farmers in the long term, given that growers will now be allowed to use up existing stock.
OTHER TOOLS
This past growing season, Lorenz said, many Midsouth producers already moved away from Belt.
"There's not a lot of product available now," he said.
"Everybody heard about this and moved on to Prevathon and Besiege. We have some other diamides that are extremely effective in the Midsouth on caterpillars. There's just less competition out there. It is just one less bullet growers have to get pests under control. Less competition is not beneficial. It means the price goes up on other products.
"It's getting so difficult for our growers down here to be profitable. I don't think non-ag people understand how much it takes to produce a crop."
With the loss of Belt, Lorenz said producers can look to a product such as Dow AgroSciences' Intrepid Edge. The product with the active ingredient methoxyfenozide was approved by EPA for use in soybeans, peanuts and pecans in 2013.
Lorenz said Intrepid Edge is "fairly effective" for some of the pests farmers in his region have been battling. Going back to broad-spectrum insecticides may not be the best idea, however, because he said they are more toxic for users.
More broadly, Lorenz said he's concerned about how difficult it is becoming for companies to jump through all the regulatory hoops to offer effective products.
"Overall the overriding thing is scrutiny of pesticides," he said.
"They (EPA) are making it more difficult for competitors to come up with insecticides and it's so expensive. They're making it difficult to meet the needs of producers. I think it's getting harder, and there are higher costs to go through the review process. It's just not lucrative for them to go through the process anymore."
About 50% of all agriculture uses of flubendiamide are on soybeans, according to EPA. The pesticide is used on only about 1% of soybeans in the United States, which would equate to roughly 820,000 acres.
EPA's environmental concerns rest with benthic organisms -- worms, clams, crabs, lobsters and other tiny organisms that live in the bottom sediments. When the EPA approved the conditional registration, it did so with an agreement with Bayer that the company would stop selling flubendiamide if EPA wasn't satisfied with the Bayer's scientific data.
Todd Neeley can be reached at todd.neeley@dtn.com
Follow him on Twitter @toddneeleyDTN
(GH/CZ)
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