The Environmental Protection Agency has finalized its Herbicide Strategy. This is the plan the agency will use to decide if any restrictions should be added to product labels when registering or renewing an herbicide.
These restrictions are “mitigation measures” to stop spray drift or erosion. Buffer strips are an example of one of these measures. The farmer would have to do these things in order to use the herbicide product.
Farm groups say that this final strategy is an improved version of what the EPA was working on earlier this year, but there are still issues with the final draft.
Kevin Malchine farms about 2,000 acres in Racine County. He says growers are concerned with the complexity of the framework. It’s not yet clear how farmers and applicators are going to implement it. Malchine adds the type and affordability of runoff mitigations is also concerning. For example, uncertainty about the distance of spray buffers and how many different mitigations farmers will need to adopt.
Malchine says the new strategy is complex — the requirements to use a product may depend on your crop and your location. There may be additional requirements on record keeping.
The American Soybean Association says the strategy is likely to cost U.S. farmers billions of dollars.