A group of Republican Senators are calling out the Environmental Protection Agency for what they call an ?attack? on crop protection tools.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley ? along with Senators Joni Ernst (Iowa), Roger Marshall (Kansas) and Mike Braun (Indiana) ? have sent a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan asking him to redirect the EPA?s Office of Pesticide Programs away from its ?current propensity for overly cautious blanket bans and severe restrictions of necessary crop protection tools back towards a regular, risk-based regulatory process.?
?Most of that deals immediately with dicamba,? said Grassley. ?But it could affect almost every chemical used. We?re asking (EPA) to certify to us the basis for any decision that?s going to be negative to that coming up because if you don?t have above the leaf application of that, it?s going to be a terrible problem for about half of the soybean crops in the United States if it can?t be used.?
Grassley adds this request follows a meeting between the senators and Administrator Regan last month.
?I think about four or five of us was in a conference call with Regan on this very point maybe three weeks ago,? said Grassley. ?I said ?when you get this all studied and you decide that you can?t certify dicamba, tell me how a farmer is supposed to control his weeds if the beans are in nine-inch rows.? That?s where I left it and I don?t have an answer yet.?
The letter says, ?U.S. farmers and ranchers are already coping with record inflation and broken supply chains ? the last thing they need is EPA voluntarily revoking or severely limiting traditional farming tools and methods. If these producers lose the ability to use certain crop protection products, farms will be forced to forgo conservation practices, like no-till farming, and revert to full tillage methods to control pests.?
Grassley made his comments during his weekly press call with farm reporters Tuesday morning.
