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Top 10 Ag Stories of 2024: No. 7

23 Dec 2024

Editor's Note: Each year, DTN publishes our choices for the Top 10 ag news stories of the year as selected by DTN analysts, editors and reporters. This year, we're counting them down from Dec. 18 to Dec. 31. On Jan. 1, 2025, we will look at some of the runners-up for the year. Today, we continue the countdown with No. 7: EPA moves forward with plans to protect endangered species from pesticides -- plans likely to increase costs for many farmers.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (DTN) -- What will be the added cost of protecting threatened and endangered species from agricultural pesticides in the future? The answer that farmers received from EPA this past year was "It depends."

In 2024, the federal agency published the final versions of two plans and the draft of a third that are intended to guide actions to protect listed species and areas deemed as "critical habitat." The overall goal for EPA is to ensure that when it registers and reregisters pesticides under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, it also meets its obligations under the Endangered Species Act -- something the agency has admittedly overlooked for decades and has been sued over incessantly.

PROTECTING ENDANGERED PLANTS

Chief among these plans is the long-awaited Final Herbicide Strategy, which was released in August, some 13 months after a draft strategy was made public. The strategy calls for identifying protections for species earlier in the pesticide review process, implementing spray drift buffers and "mitigation measures" intended to reduce herbicide exposure through runoff or soil erosion.

Under the strategy, the level of mitigation required will be determined by the potential of a herbicide to negatively affect listed species at the population level. The higher the potential, the more mitigation required. The more mitigation required, the higher the cost to farmers to comply.

EPA assigned point values to an entire menu of these measures, which include vegetative filter strips, grassed waterways, field borders, cover crops and more. Farmers will choose from the menu to accumulate the total number of points required to apply an individual herbicide. EPA has determined that products not likely to affect a listed species require zero mitigation points. Those herbicides with low, medium and high potential to affect listed species require three, six or nine points of mitigation, respectively.

Those who farm in counties deemed to have low runoff vulnerability receive mitigation points just for farming in those regions; whereas those who farm in counties with high runoff vulnerability receive no points. EPA allots one mitigation point to farmers for simply "tracking" their mitigation efforts.

News of the strategy's release left farmers worried about the feasibility of the plan and its overall effects on farming. Josh Gackle, a soybean farmer from North Dakota and then-president of the American Soybean Association, acknowledged that while the final strategy was an improvement over the draft, concerns remained over the strategy's complexity, its affordability and whether these mitigation requirements were supported by the best available science, as required by law.

"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," he said in an ASA statement.

In October, when EPA announced the registration of glufosinate-P, farmers got their first look at how the pesticide registration process might be affected by the Final Herbicide Strategy moving forward. While the proposed product label originally called for one point of mitigation, the final approved label required three points -- the amount of mitigation EPA deems necessary for a pesticide with low potential to affect listed species -- along with a change to mandatory downwind spray buffer distances. It remains to be seen how the strategy will influence registration of herbicides considered to have a high potential for adversely affecting endangered and threatened species.

OTHER PROTECTION PLANS

Roughly a month after releasing the Final Herbicide Strategy, EPA announced its Vulnerable Species Action Plan (VSAP) in late September, which is intended to protect 27 plant and animal species identified as imperiled or in danger of extinction from pesticides. The list included the Attwater's greater prairie chicken, native to the coasts of Texas and Louisiana; the Buena Vista Lake ornate shrew found in southern California; rusty patched bumblebees historically found in the eastern U.S. and upper Midwest; and five endangered plant species from Lake Wales Ridge in Florida.

Like the Final Herbicide Strategy, the VSAP includes mitigation measures to reduce common pesticide exposure routes, such spray drift and runoff, but it also addresses other routes, including on-field exposure and pesticide volatilization.

While the VSAP initially included only 27 of the nearly 1,700 plants and animals listed as threatened or endangered, EPA stated that the agency expects to add more species through a formal consultation with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. The agency plans to release maps identifying species and their habitats in the coming months.

Also expected in the first months of 2025 is the Final Insecticide Strategy. EPA released a draft of the strategy for public comment in July 2024, and the agency is required by a settlement agreement to produce the final document by March 2025. Like the Herbicide Strategy before it, the Insecticide Strategy proposes spray drift buffers and mitigation measures to reduce the potential for insecticide exposure to more than 850 insect species listed as threatened or endangered.

It's unknown how this strategy may change from its draft to final versions or how a new administration will influence it and other strategies already in place.

Read more about DTN's coverage of pesticides and endangered species:

-- "Strategy Outlines EPA Plan to Reduce Herbicide Exposure for Endangered Species," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

-- "EPA Update Details Plans to Improve Draft Herbicide Strategy," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

-- "EPA Releases Plan to Protect Vulnerable Species From Pesticides Exposure," https://www.dtnpf.com/…

-- "EPA Opens 60-Day Comment Period on Agency Plan to Protect Endangered Insects From Pesticides," https://www.dtnpf.com/…