EPA Looks to Ease Insecticide Use Burdens for Farmers

Agricultural sprayer in the field The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is modifying protections under the Endangered Species Act to make certain insecticides easier for farmers to use. A final draft of the final Insecticide Strategy identifies protections for federally endangered and threatened species from the use of insecticides.

Modifications to the Insecticide Strategy include:

Reducing buffer distances across all application methods.
Providing credit for any reduction in the proportion of a treated field for ground applications
Developing a process to qualify conservation programs that give growers more credit for being part of a conservation program than initially proposed.
Developing a process to qualify external parties that would assess a grower’s farms and determine the existing mitigation points that could be achieved by practices a grower already has in place.
Updating key data sources and identification of invertebrate species that may occur on agricultural fields.
Adding a Pesticide Use Limitation Area (PULA) group for generalist species that reside in wetlands to reduce mitigations applied outside of wetland habitats.

The National Corn Growers Association and the American Soybean Association are among several ag groups that support the EPA’s efforts to ease the burden on American farmers.