Council of Producers & Distributors of Agrotechnology

Terry Kippley, CPDA

September 3, 2024

In this Issue:

• Welcome New Members!
• EPA Releases its Final Herbicide Strategy
• EPA's Draft Insecticide Strategy
• Register for EPS's Webinar on Draft Strategy to Better Protect Endangered Species from Insecticides
• CPDA State Affairs Committee Meeting
• CPDA Government Affairs Committee Meeting
• CPDA at the DNC
• Kynetec Meeting
• 2024 CPDA Annual Meeting

Please help us welcome new members Kynetec and Seatex. Membership dues fund our advocacy efforts which include working with the EPA on the possibility of giving growers credit for the use of Drift Reduction Adjuvants as an ESA mitigation tool alternative to No-Spray buffers.

EPA Releases its Final Herbicide Strategy—Drift Reduction Adjuvants are Included

In a major scientific and policy victory for CPDA members, EPA released its final Herbicide Strategy, which includes Drift Reduction Adjuvants (DRAs) as an approved mitigation measure.

By way of review, EPA’s Endangered Species Act Workplan dictates what EPA must do during the pesticide registration or registration review process. If a product “may affect” a listed species, EPA must consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (the Services), as applicable. During consultation, the Services provide EPA with measures, where needed, to avoid jeopardy to listed species and adverse modification of critical habitats from a pesticide. To better protect listed species, EPA is working to improve how EPA assesses effects to listed species in its pesticide evaluations and consultation processes. One of these processes is the use of various “strategies” to protect listed species, including the Herbicide Strategy.

The Herbicide Strategy is designed to protect over nine hundred listed species from the potential impacts of herbicides. The final strategy includes more options for mitigation measures compared to the draft, including DRAs. The strategy also reduces the level of mitigation needed for applicators who have already implemented measures identified in the strategy to reduce pesticide movement from treated fields into habitats through pesticide spray drift and runoff from a field. The measures include cover crops, conservation tillage, windbreaks, and DRAs and other adjuvants.

The final strategy itself does not impose any requirements or restrictions on pesticide use. Rather, EPA will use the strategy to inform mitigations for new active ingredient registrations and registration review of conventional herbicides. EPA recognized that the spray drift and runoff mitigations from the strategy can be complicated for some pesticide users to adopt for the first time. 

EPA has developed a guide that outlined multiple real-world examples of how a pesticide applicator could adopt the mitigation from this strategy when those measures appear on pesticide labels. To help applicators evaluate mitigation options, EPA will release a mitigation menu website this fall.

CPDA distributed a press release commending the inclusion of adjuvants in EPA’s final Herbicide Strategy which was picked up by The Scoop.

EPA's Draft Insecticide Strategy

CPDA’s Expert Team continues to work on our response with CPDA provided data to increase buffer zone reduction values and include other classes of drift reduction adjuvants other than oil emulsion that are currently approved. Public comments are due to the EPA by September 23, 2024.

CPDA will be providing additional data and technical expertise to the agency showcasing the benefits of DRAs. As CPDA’s working group continues reviewing the proposal, the good news is that the proposal links boom height, nozzle use and DRA’s that would provide substantial buffer use reductions for growers.

Our plan going forward is to reinforce EPA’s Environmental Fate and Effects Division (EFED) position regarding DRAs with CPDA provided data to increase the reduction values. Additional data is needed, so CPDA is requesting wind tunnel data for fungicides and insecticides.

Your effort in providing data has been pivotal in the progress we have made with EFED. We would ask for this data to be submitted by September 5th to ensure enough time to develop our response to the agency. Public comments are due to the EPA by September 23, 2024.

Register for EPA's Webinar on Draft Strategy to Better Protect Endangered Species from Insecticides

EPA will hold a public webinar on September 5, 2024, from 1-2 PM ET to provide an overview of its draft Insecticide Strategy. The webinar will include:

• Discussion of the proposed three-step framework to identify potential population-level impacts to species, identify mitigation measures to address these impacts, and determine the geographic extent of the mitigation measures;
• An overview of case studies to illustrate how the framework could be applied to representative insecticides and how EPA expects to implement the strategy in its registration and registration review actions.

The webinar is open to the public, but you must first register.

CPDA State Affairs Meeting

CPDA held its quarterly State Affairs and Regulatory Update on August 13. The group discussed the following updates and issues areas:



• California
• CPDA priority issues
• Washington
• Maine
• Maryland
• Minnesota
• EPA PRIA 5 Issues

Also, CPDA continues to explore vendors that might help in monitoring and acting on proposed state legislative or regulatory efforts that could impact CPDA member companies. More information to come shortly on those efforts.

If you would like to participate in future CPDA State Affairs Meetings, please contact Andrew Walmsley at Andrew.Walmsley@cpda.com The next meeting will be Tuesday, November 12 at 2 p.m.

CPDA Government Affairs Committee Meeting

CPDA held a Government Affairs Committee meeting on August 14 to discuss CPDA priorities, strategies, and next steps. The committee is working on an appropriations strategy to ensure full funding for EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs. The committee also discussed progress on mitigation options regarding the Herbicide and Insecticide Strategies. A Farm Bill update was also provided.

One of the issues raised by the committee was ensuring that CPDA was taking the lead regarding issues surrounding PFAS. Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) are a group of chemicals widely used in consumer products for decades and have received increasing attention over the past few years as scientists and regulators have pointed out their ability to persist in the environment, earning the term “forever chemicals.” EPA has recently acted to address PFAS, including regulation of plastic containers such as fluorinated high-density polyethylene (HDPE) containers. A recent study authored by environmental groups noted that 14% of “conventional active ingredients” registered by EPA could qualify as PFAS. EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs currently only considers six active ingredients as PFAS out of the approximately 1,000 registered active ingredients. There could also be additional scrutiny of inert ingredients and adjuvants. Regulation by EPA or even states could pose a significant operational risk to CPDA members. CPDA will continue to monitor and act accordingly if additional regulatory actions are proposed.

CPDA at Democratic Convention & Trump/Vance Event

The week of August 19th CPDA Stategic Advisor Jay Vroom attended both the ag events at the Democrat National Convention in Chicago and an ag-centric event for the Trump-Vance Campaign in Omaha. Except for the virtual political conventions due to COVID 4 years ago, Jay has been at both political party conventions since 1996. He and Scott Rawlins and Ethan Mathews were at the ag event for the Republican Convention in Wisconsin last month.

The ag events in Chicago were well attended—starting with an afternoon reception hosted by CLA and RISE on the 70th floor of the Willis Tower (originally Sears Tower) with spectacular views of Lake Michigan and the Loop. Then the official “Leaders of American Ag” event occupied the entire evening—with dozens of sponsoring and allied organizations represented and hundreds gathered to hear from a number of sponsor orgs and current Democrat ag leaders in DC (both USDA with Secretary Vilsack and Deputy Secretary Torres-Small and a number of House Ag Committee members).

Jay went on to Omaha from Chicago to help support an event celebrating the Trump-Vance Campaign. The event was keynoted by VP-nominee and US Senator JD Vance. Also attending were a number of midwestern US Senators and Governors who provided a show of force in support of their party’s ticket.

Nebraska rancher Charles Herbster, Nebraska US Senator Deb Fischer, Jay Vroom

Jay Vroom, House Ag Member Congressman Don Bacon, Jamie Vroom

Jay Vroom, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa farmer Ben Riensche

Senator JD Vance

Kynetec Meeting

This week Terry Kippley and Jay Vroom conducted a virtual meeting with Kynetec’s Greg Malcolm, executive director for the firm’s customer success outreach programs. Kynetec (long known to most in ag as Doane Market Research) is the premier ag market data provider in the USA and has similar functionality in all the major ag markets around the world. Greg has committed Kynetec to joining CPDA and looks forward to participating in parts of the upcoming meetings in San Diego to meet the membership and discuss how working together CPDA and Kynetec and improve pesticide use data that can lead to ever better product registration outcomes at EPA.

Specifically, Kynetec is seeking CPDA and its members to both encourage farmer customers to be responsive when Kynetec survey calls come to them—explaining to farmers that giving careful and accurate pesticide use responses to the market researchers directly enhances the use data that EPA rely on to make fair registration decisions. Kynetec also are striving via the Congressional Appropriations process to secure more stable funding for US agency access to Kynetec database information—particularly for USDA access—and requests CPDA support for those efforts as well.

Finally, Greg and Terry discussed how to frame a concept whereby Kynetec might survey suppliers of adjuvant products to allow CPDA members to get a better understanding of the scope of the market and its many beneficial aspects. More to discuss on all these fronts in San Diego! Kynetec is also pleased to support CPDA advocacy efforts with more timely and accurate snapshots of the overall CP marketplace—and confirmed to CPDA that the 2023 US market was about $15 billion.

ONL TWO WEEKS AWAY!

2024 CPDA Annual Meeting & PAC Silent Auction

Make plans to attend the 2024 CPDA Annual Meeting September 15-18 in beautiful San Diego, California. Like the last two annual meetings, we will be holding our annual meeting at the same time CropLife America is holding theirs. To take advantage of this partnership, we will be holding a joint networking reception with CLA where you can reconnect with old friends while making new ones.

Until next time...