EPA’s final herbicide strategy to comply with the Endangered Species Act is expected to be released in August and will be used by the agency to inform mitigation measures for conventional herbicides in registration review and for registration of new herbicides. 

When the strategy is released, EPA will help farmers understand the new regulations. Jake Li, EPA deputy assistant administrator for pesticide programs, says his office is reaching out to crop consultants and Extension to help growers implement mitigation measures on their farm and identify which ones to adapt. 

Speaking via Zoom to the summer meeting of the National Cotton Council’s American Cotton Producers at the Renaissance Hotel in Asheville, N.C. Aug. 2, Li said the herbicide strategy will include a map showing herbicide runoff potential for every county in the lower 48 states.  

High or low runoff potential 

Li said there will be many parts of the country with few or no additional mitigation requirements because of the herbicide strategy. 

Many areas are flat and have minimal runoff potential. Farmers will earn credit for existing conservation practices already used on their farms. 

“What we heard from many growers is that in their states there are agricultural stewardship programs that many folks are already participating in to maintain soil health, reduce soil runoff, and so forth. Most of those measures are also measures to reduce pesticide runoff so we will be giving credit to anyone who participates in those programs,” Li told the cotton farmers. 

 “There should be very few of the runoff mitigation measures that are completely foreign. There are really only a limited number of ways to reduce pesticide runoff of a field. And that’s assuming a field is not flat. If it’s a flat field, what you’re going to see is that there are going to be very few mitigation measures that will come from runoff,” Li explained. 

If a field is not flat, Li said stewardship measures that USDA’s National Resource Conservation is already using to help growers will be part of EPA’s new herbicide strategy. He said farmers using these conservation practices will be given “x amount” of credit under the herbicide strategy. 

“When you add it up — and we’ve actually been doing the math — we expect that many growers are going to have few to almost no additional requirements because of the herbicide strategy. If they are in a low-risk area, they are probably not going to have many additional measures,” Li said. 

And while EPA’s final herbicide strategy is expected to be released shortly, the public comment period for the agency’s draft insecticide strategy to comply with the Endangered Species Act is now underway. The deadline to comment is Sept 23. Li said not to expect any extension of the comment period. 

“I know many organizations are going to ask for an extension of the comment period. We are unfortunately highly unlikely to grant one because we are under a court deadline to issue a final insecticide strategy by winter of next year. Even with the current 60-day comment period, we are absolutely in a rush to meet that deadline. Any extension is going to create a very high risk that we’re going to miss that deadline,” Li said.  

Li explained that the draft insecticide strategy is modeled after the herbicide strategy.  

“We wanted to make those documents as similar as possible so that there is not a steep learning curve with the insecticide strategy. Much like the herbicide strategy, the insecticide strategy focuses on three key questions: What are the risks to listed species? How much mitigation measures are needed? And where are those mitigation measures needed?” he said.  

“The insecticide strategy also benefits from a lot of the lessons learned through the draft herbicide strategy public comment process. We’ve made a number of changes to the draft herbicide strategy after comments from grower groups,” he said.  

“Those changes were also incorporated into the draft insecticide strategy. The draft insecticide strategy benefits from some of our latest thinking around how to narrow the amount of mitigation that’s needed so that we’re only asking for mitigations where we think the risks to endangered species are high enough that we have to address those risks.”