EP. 48 - EPA's New Approach to Pesticide Registrations: Farmers Should Get Informed and Get Ready

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Herbicides, insecticides and fungicides make up some of the most important tools in a farmer's toolbox.

And it's up to each one of us to take seriously the responsibilities of being a good steward for those tools, and the environment around us.

But recently, the process by which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pesticides has been challenged in court, on the grounds that it didn't comply with parts of the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

And so EPA has to build a plan to prove it's in compliance with the ESA, causing potential disruptions for growers.

In this episode, we're examining how we got here, what changes growers should expect, how farmers should get prepared, and how groups like the National Corn Growers Association are working with the EPA and other environmental services to minimize the impact on farming operations.

Our expert guests include:

• Megan Dwyer, the Director of Conservation and Nutrient Stewardship for Illinois Corn
• Stanley Culpepper, an Extension Weed Scientist with the University of Georgia
• Bill Belzer, the Global Stewardship Director at Corteva

This episode is sponsored by Corteva Agriscience.

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/ncga?selected=PDM1812895342

Dusty Weis

Hello, and welcome to the CobCast, Inside the Grind with the National Corn Growers Association. This is where leaders, growers, and stakeholders in the corn industry can turn… for big-picture conversations about the state of the industry and its future.

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I'm Dusty Weis, and today we're getting down to the brass tacks of a plan that the Environmental Protection Agency has had in the works… to prove they're complying with the Endangered Species Act when they review and approve crop protection products for use in agriculture. As this plan makes its way into the countryside, it will change how farmers can use herbicides, insecticides and fungicides.

In this episode, we'll look at how we got here, what changes farmers can expect, and how groups like NCGA are engaging with EPA as they put the plan into action.

Here to break it all down for us are Megan Dwyer and Stanley Culpepper who have both followed this issue closely as it's developed over more than a year now.

First of all, Megan Dwyer is the director of conservation and nutrient stewardship for Illinois Corn. Megan, welcome to the show.

Megan Dwyer

Thanks for having me. Looking forward to this great conversation. And it's awesome that we've got Stanley to join us in this today.

Dusty Weis

Absolutely, a ton of expertise, very highly recommended here. Stanley Culpepper, of course, an extension weed scientist with the University of Georgia. Stanley, welcome.

Stanley Culpepper

Thank you so much. Again, similar, it's a pleasure to be here with you guys.

Dusty Weis

And we'd be remiss if we didn't point out as well that this episode is brought to you by Corteva Agriscience. A little later in the episode, we're going to hear a bit more from our partners at Corteva on stewardship and what farmers can do now to help keep crop protection products effective for the long term. But Megan and Stanley, thank you both for joining us today. Before we get into the details of this plan and what it's going to mean going forward, I think it's worth taking a step back and looking at where this issue came from. How did we get here? How'd it get started, Stanley?

Stanley Culpepper

Yeah, so Dusty, you really got to go back, believe it or not, to 1973. In 1973, Congress basically put into act the Endangered Species Act. At that time, it was actually to provide framework to conserve and protect endangered and threatened species in their habitats. And I think all of us in agriculture think, wow, that sounds pretty good. We're supportive. You know, the habitat and the lands that we grow our crops on and we live on, you know, we want to protect those.

But I think what was not expected that's really come to light in the last really three or four years is how that act influences the registration of new compounds or new pesticides that we need in our toolbox, as well as the re-registration process, those older tools.

As a weed scientist, we work a lot with older tools, right? So we go through the re-registration process.

But when that federal action of registering a product occurs, basically when the endangered or threatened species are potentially harmed by a pesticide, the law requires consultation with the services. And unfortunately, since the Endangered Species Act has been in place, the EPA really never consulted with the services when they registered or re-registered a pesticide.

And what that has ultimately done to us in the last couple of years is it's put us in a very difficult situation with court cases or lawsuits where essentially we haven't followed the guidelines or the laws when registering or re-registering a product. And it makes us vulnerable to losing these tools, completely taking them out of our toolbox. And as you know, all of our growers need every tool that we've got plus additional options.

Dusty Weis

Yeah. And registration of herbicides, of pesticides is something that most growers are probably familiar with, but can we like take a step back and sort of explain how that process works as well? Essentially a manufacturer comes forward and they say, this is a tool and this is a prescription for how we think this tool could be used. And then it's reviewed by the EPA. Then that goes onto the label for the product. And essentially that determines what is a legal use for the product. Is that an oversimplification? Is that how that works?

Stanley Culpepper

No, I think you've got it. think the other important thing that most people don't realize and the latest numbers I've seen is it takes on average about 12 years and $300 million to bring a new tool to the toolbox. So the amount of research that goes into it as far as we think a lot about efficacy, control on a pest, but as far as safety to the applicator, safety to the environment, safety to the consumer.

The amount of resources and effort that go into that before a product ever reaches a grower is staggering, right? It's absolutely staggering.

Dusty Weis

Now, of course, we know that growers, when they're planning for the season ahead, that process starts months and months or even a couple of years before the actual growing season gets started. And so if there's a sudden disruption to the process and they lose one of the tools that they were counting on on having on their toolbox, that could cause big headaches in farm country. So what happened next in this legal story with the EPA here?

Stanley Culpepper

Well, so once our products… and when you look at the toolbox, I'm thinking about that 1200 active ingredients are registered at the US EPA… Probably 90 to 95% of them had not fulfilled the requirements of the Endangered Species Act.

So again, that made us very, very vulnerable for those products to be taken off the market. So the EPA responded because they understand how important it is our growers continue to provide the food, feed and fiber for humankind, national security. And we could talk a whole show just about the importance of our growers.

Dusty Weis

Can and have, Stanley. Can and have.

Stanley Culpepper

But what quickly the EPA did is try to fix the situation, right? Try to make sure when they are making federal actions, again, registering or re-registering pesticides, they are abiding by the requirements within the Endangered Species Act, as well as, lot of you growers have probably heard about FIFRA and other requirements that they have.

So basically they're trying to come into compliance with all the laws and regulations that they have to follow when they go to bring us a new tool or re-register that new tool for us. So that's really what we've done the last couple of years. We were vulnerable to losing our tools to the courts. The EPA responded like they had to, because if they didn't, we potentially wouldn't have many of these tools even now.

Since then, really the last one to two to three years, many of the ag stakeholders, including your group have been at the center of trying to, really it's a balancing act. If we don't do anything in the agricultural community, we potentially lose our products completely.

But if the EPA is too aggressive with the potential for overwhelming regulations, and the loss of our pesticides or at least a practical use of those pesticides were really a significant balancing act and that's really what we've been doing the last two to three years is trying to keep the tool and not end up with such overwhelming regulations we really can't use the tool.

Keeping in mind, who are the true stewards of the environment? Who provide the habitat for the endangered species or the threatened species, right? I will argue a large part of that is the family farm.

So we have to figure out how to do this and bring the tools with practical use patterns and protect the family farm and it has been a tremendous challenge and again groups like yours and your engagement and your involvement have been essential to moving forward not back.

Dusty Weis

Megan, I'm curious as you look back at the last 18 months or so, how has this process played out from your perspective at Illinois Corn?

Megan Dwyer

Well, in some regards, it's been rapid fire and in others, we're constantly in what's going on. And so I think taking a step back to we first started seeing some of these draft strategies surface, there was a lot there. And to Stanley's point, trying to find really that balance of knowing that we need these products and some of the mitigations even, in order for them to be successful, require pesticide products.

And so finding a way to make sure that we are being stewards, are able to follow the label with the intent to really be mindful of potential threatened and endangered species in an area, as well as being able to continue to do our jobs.

I mean, we are family farmers, but it's still a job and a business. And so that has to be viable as well.

One thing that I think has been really great and a positive note is how receptive EPA and the services have been. I can speak both on the national corn side, as well as speaking for Illinois Corn, being able to be at the table and have a seat and having really great dialogue back and forth with all the folks that are trying to draft and refine these strategies. It was very telling when we went from the draft herbicide strategy into what was the final that came out here just about a month ago and really looking at and how much they took back from that feedback and made those revisions and made it a little more palatable.

You know, there's still work to be done. And we're working on comments for the insecticide strategy right now that's in draft form. But knowing that it does seem like there's genuine interest in trying to make this work for all parties.

And to Stanley's earlier point, I this all stemmed from litigation, from, you know, potentially not adhering to the statute that existed and being vulnerable to these lawsuits. And so whatever comes out of this has to work for the farmer, but it also has to then make sure that it's going to stop and slow down these lawsuits and the potential for that risk and exposure.

Dusty Weis

Ultimately in some places farmers, small farming operations, small businesses out in farm country get left out of the discussion entirely. And so it's good to hear that at least the EPA has been able to engage with groups like the National Corn Growers Association to get the input to hear how it's going to trickle down into farm economies and how it's important to have these tools in the box for small growers.

But I can imagine that some of the strategies that have been drafted and come up with to address these problems are pretty complex documents, so as you've been engaging with the EPA on getting these strategies put together, what has NCGA focused on making sure to get right for corn growers?

Megan Dwyer

Obviously we want to make sure things are founded in science, but also recognize the advancements in technology. And there is a bit of a disconnect in what's available for data to support some of the newer precision technologies that are being used to show at what a micro scale we can actually manage and make applications in a field.

But I also think it's worth adding that just because the strategy is final, it doesn't mean the work is done. The strategy is a guidance for when a product is registered or re-registered.

So we are gonna have to continue to be mindful and diligent to watch products come through that process to see what those potential label changes are given this guidance. And so I think that's something that we're also watching very closely is the resources and capabilities of being able to monitor these products going through.

But as I mentioned, and to your question on following the science, wanting to make sure these things work, also trying to make sure that we are representative of our farmers from across the U.S.

We know that what happens in the I-states is very different than what happens in Kansas or dry land Nebraska or the irrigation and chemigation. And so I think it's trying to really make sure that we have as many voices that come in to be funneled into one unified voice and making sure that we can try and make recommendations that are going to work for as many of our growers as possible.

Dusty Weis

Certainly one of the really valuable aspects of having National Corn Growers Association on the job here is that they represent growers from so many of those states across the country.

Stanley, I wanted to get your perspective as someone who works primarily with weeds here at the University of Georgia Extension. In your work, you're focused on one of the reasons that farmers need herbicides, weeds, especially the ones that have developed some resistance to some of the types of herbicides that are out there. So how do you think about this issue knowing what farmers are facing right now?

Stanley Culpepper

You know, we understand and well documented the importance of having effective and efficient herbicides and the value that they return not only to the family farm sustainability, but our ability to again, produce the amount of food, feed, and fiber for to support the world. Right.

So we have to have tools in the toolbox, and I not only work agronomic crops, I work vegetable crops.

And some of my vegetable crops, I only have one or two tools. We're talking about maybe losing one or two tools sometimes in agronomic crops. That may be all I have. So again, every single tool that we have in that toolbox is critically important. And that's why I think the process of working together, just like Megan said, it has been unbelievable.

In my opinion, when the draft herbicide strategy came out, it was a catastrophic disaster, at least for our family farm, and I think for most family farms. But when the final strategy came out, the difference between the two, absolutely monumental. Ag stakeholders, like the corn growers, like the soybean growers, cotton growers, all of these individuals had a tremendous influence on that. But a lot of credit actually goes to the EPA.

You mentioned EPA's engagement. EPA has spent so much time, not only visiting with us, but visiting with actual farmers to understand what we do, how we do it, why we do it. That engagement, again, credit to them, because they've invested a lot of time and a lot of effort to understand what we do. But through that engagement, I think there's been a lot of learning on both sides, right?

Our regulatory partners now understand how much we steward these tools, how much we cherish these tools and how important they are, whether it's weed resistance management or control or any type of pest management.

And at the same time, I think we respect how complex the litigation component of ESA is, how complex herbicide strategy is, insecticide strategy will be, fungicide strategy coming soon after that, right? So I think the relationships are always the key to success.

And one of the positives through this process is building those relationships with our regulatory partners. And I mentioned the EPA, but we actually started an ESA pilot program three years ago in Georgia, doing a lot of the mapping work of where these species are and where our farm fields potentially overlap with species or species habitat. And we got to work with the Fish and Wildlife Service and it's been absolutely phenomenal. Just a wonderful experience, great people.

Everybody wants to support our farmers. We just have to figure out how to do it in a science-based approach that can withstand continued litigation.

Megan Dwyer

Yeah, I want to echo that. So we have rusty patch bumblebee in Illinois. We've also been working with Fish and Wildlife here, working and connecting them with some farmers and talking through how this can work. And just want to echo just how refreshing it is to work with them on trying to share this common goal of finding something that's going to work both for the farmer, knowing that they need to stay successful and stay in business and also be mindful of what we can do to truly protect and what makes the most sense to protect some of these species.

And so just want to echo that, the services have been wonderful in all of this. And it really has shown that when you're willing to show up and try and find a compromise, they're equally interested in sitting down and trying to figure this out together.

Dusty Weis

Well, and Megan, I'm sure it's reassuring for folks to hear that all these stakeholders are working on their behalf to get this done in a way that's hopefully not going to be overly burdensome.

There's another group of stakeholders who are working toward that same goal. And that is the manufacturers of these products that we've been talking about.

So joining us now to talk about those pieces of the crop protection puzzle is Corteva's Global Stewardship Director, Bill Belzer. Bill, thank you so much for joining us and thank you to Corteva for sponsoring this episode.

Bill Belzer

It's our pleasure, Dusty. Glad to be here and have had a chance to work with NCGA over the years and couldn't be more proud to be a part of this and help sponsor these activities. It's a great, great thing.

Dusty Weis

Well, and Bill, throughout the conversation so far, this concept has come up over and over again from Megan and Stanley. They keep coming back to this notion of being stewards of the tools that we use to protect our crops. As the global stewardship director at Corteva and also as someone who works on a family farm in Southern Iowa, what does stewardship mean to you?

Bill Belzer

Great question. I get that question quite a bit. And it really comes down to responsible use of a product from its inception to its use in the marketplace, and then ultimately its discontinuation. So that's the official definition of stewardship. It's a life cycle approach to responsible product use.

I think about how that applies. I mean, we have a family farm in South Central Iowa, as you noted, and farm that with some with my father, but mostly my son. you know, it's, it's, there's multiple dimensions to stewardship that you think about just being responsible, there's financial stewardship, there's product stewardship, there is land stewardship, all those things, we have to consider and think about, can we leave this better than we had received it?

I think, you know, knowing farmers, they are the natural stewards of the land. They've had to innovate over the years. I think about my grandfather installing terraces and us moving from reduced till to no till and thinking about all the things to be able to pass our land on to my hope is from myself to my son and ultimately leave it as good or better than what you know I had received it myself that's really what stewardship means to me and it has a personal place in you know in my life as well, not only in what I do but what I do on the farm.

Dusty Weis

Well, and Bill, it sounds like your grandfather and my grandfather read from the same book of stewardship, because I swear I've heard those exact same words out of my grandfather's mouth. So then when we talk about being stewards of the crop protection products that we use, how do you define that?

Bill Belzer

When you think about a crop protection product, we spend roughly around $300 million and about 12 years to get a product to market. And a seed product, you know, biotech product, has in-plant protection or herbicide tolerance, we'll spend about $150 million and about 12 years to bring it to market.

There's a lot of steps you've got to go through to make that happen. So knowing it's as costly as it is, what we see product stewardship is really, again, responsible use and using best practices ultimately to deliver those products for a long period of time.

So we're going to develop all these innovations. We want to be able to maintain those products in the market as long as we can. One element is just general durability. How do you make sure that we manage resistance of it could be plant pests, it could be weeds, a variety of other things. Using best practices and using these products responsibly is a partnership with the grower to be able to take those best practices and extend that life.

In addition to that too, we also are in some interesting dynamics and it was talked about earlier on the program about the Endangered Species Act. And the regulatory systems, not just in the US, but beyond as we think about export market approvals, et cetera, are requiring more of us to make sure that we clarify how products are being used responsibly and ultimately if we need to re-register a product, if we need to register a brand new product, those hurdles are getting higher like Endangered Species Act, which we were one of the first to go through with the Enlist herbicide product.

All those things, if we are able to use those products responsibly at the farm gate with that partnership, it all aids in the process to get products re-registered and ultimately new products, new innovations to get registered as well.

Dusty Weis

You know, it's interesting because I don't think that people have always thought about crop protection products or seed products as the kind of thing that you steward for the future. When you talk about a product, people think of it as something that you put it on the field once or twice or four times throughout the course of a season and it does what it's supposed to do. And then next year you do the same thing if you need to.

But I don't know if there's been that mentality around these things that you need to preserve for future generations. But I think the conversation is changing around that. How has that conversation changed over the past decade or so, would you say, Bill?

Bill Belzer

I mean, it's interesting as you watch weed species as an example, when we think about different herbicide actives that have ended up with some resistance issues. We've also seen, even with insect traits, where in certain cases, certain traits have become less effective because of use.

Farmers can appreciate this, they're racing against biology. Our job as a company is to help them get ahead of that biology and we bring those innovations in.

I think the fact that we think about mode of action on herbicides and we want to mix those things up to ultimately get ahead of potential races of weeds that encumber us and are shifting or bugs that are shifting, and so we need new modes of action for insect control.

I think those have become very apparent in the last decade, and the need for us using these innovations in a way that helps us to ultimately, again, end up with grower success. I mean, at end of the day, we're about a grower's success. We want them to be able to maximize their capability on every acre because that's the need, especially in times like this, we want to help maximize their yield and do all we can to be able to provide the most productivity per acre.

And so that's why that partnership is critical is delivering those technologies and using them in a way that we can create not only a length of time for that product to be viable in the market, but also prepare us when we go to EPA or USDA on the next new product, that it's a marketplace and environment that is well suited to say we're not gonna put onerous regulations around XYZ product.

Dusty Weis

Well, we've all got a part to play. Certainly yours at Corteva is to help us stay one step ahead of evolution, and ours out in the field is to follow the label and put the products on as they're designed to be used. And so if we all do our part, we're going to be able to continue to build on yields, continue to provide food, feed and fiber for the world.

Bill, we really appreciate your taking the time to join us today and provide a perspective from Corteva. Your Corteva's Global Stewardship Director, Bill Belzer. Thank you for joining us and a big thank you once again to Corteva for inviting you and for sponsoring this episode.

Bill Belzer

Thanks, Dusty, and thanks everybody listening.

Dusty Weis

This is the Cobcast: Inside the Grind with the National Corn Growers Association, and I'm Dusty Weis.

And before the break, we were discussing EPA's process for showing that it's in compliance with the Endangered Species Act and what that could mean for farmers with Megan Dwyer, the Director of Conservation and Nutrient Stewardship for Illinois Corn, and Stanley Culpepper, an extension weed scientist with the University of Georgia.

And Megan and Stanley, a few weeks back, the EPA published its final strategy for herbicides. What do farmers need to know about it?

Megan Dwyer

Yeah, I think starting out, as we mentioned earlier, that these strategies are going to influence future label decisions. And so for farmers to be aware that as new labels come out, they're probably going to have to, at least in the short term, go to a couple different sites, to really find out if they're in an area, if there's going to be additional requirements for them, and what they're asked to do to make sure that they are applying and using a product on label.

For our farmers, we've been trying to get them to think about this in two buckets. There's the runoff and erosion side and then your spray drift bucket. The runoff and erosion are a point system. We are anticipating seeing those points range from zero to nine. Most cases, we're hoping to stay somewhere under a six, but all of that is going to be product-based usage and all sorts of variables going into that.

And then your spray drift, there's going to be a buffer requirement that can be reduced by a percent based on different activities. So helping them get prepared and think through how they're currently applying products, what they can do if they need to make a change. Maybe they're already doing all of the right things and they have enough points doing enough things to negate some of that spray drift buffer. But just trying to make them think and frame that up in those two buckets is kind of where we've been coming from from the corn family.

Stanley Culpepper

Yeah, so on my end, kind of from the Cooperative Extension Service, really the last three years, what we have been doing is generating data: data after data after data, trying to develop processes to understand exactly where species are, where they need protection. We've been trying to develop data on mitigations to expand the proposed mitigation menu and to expand the point values, which I think we were collectively monumentally successful.

Again, kudos to the EPA for willing to work with us.

Now, since the final herbicide strategy came out, at least with herbicides, I believe we move more into an educational component. And if your growers want some really, really good reading, it's about 482 pages in the herbicide strategy. But if you were to actually go read it, you'd probably have a few adjectives where we won't talk about here.

But when you get through it, two things I think will come to mind. One is flexibility.

And this is what we worked so hard to get, flexibility in the requirements to use our tools.

And then complexity, right? There's a direct correlation on how complex this is gonna be.

So as we move to the educational component, helping the growers adopt practices or at least document the practices that they're already doing, it's gonna be really, really unique I think across the country.

So for example, my approach in Georgia for cotton or soybean grow or even a corn grower may be completely different than that in your part of the world.

So one thing I will say is advisors… if you have advisors, you know crop consultant or like for us you have the cooperative extension service… those individuals that have access to advisors that are knowledgeable of herbicide strategy and its flexibility. They can be very, very creative to take advantage of what we do every day and that's steward these tools. So that is gonna be a significant challenge for us.

The good thing, and I think Megan said it, we have time, right? The first real restriction on us is still quite a ways away. The final herbicide strategy is nothing but the framework that will be used to implement restrictions on us in our future. So we have time, but it's the educational component helping the growers understand the process.

And I'll give you an example. So Megan said, run off erosion, you're gonna have somewhere between zero and nine points. Well, my goal is gonna be try to get every one of my growers to nine points because if I can get them to nine points, then that keeps me from having to look at 70 different herbicide or pesticide labels on a given farm, right?

So there are a lot of creative approaches and the educational component I think is going to be key to that but you have to stay in tune.

And the other thing I will mention there are a lot of different scenarios or different processes that are information that's going to come out to you.

For example, the US EPA is developing a calculator. This calculator I think is going to be so powerful, not only to help you keep up with your points with front-off and erosion mitigation, but maybe more importantly, if it's done like I hope they do it, it'll be an educational tool.

So if you don't know what a mitigation measure is, for example, right there in the calculator, hopefully we'll be able to click on it. And when we click on it, it will define it for us. So there's so much effort from all the ag stakeholders to develop information, unify that information as much as possible and to deliver it.

It's kind of like we want to train the trainer, but also we're gonna train the farmer. And I think that's really what's gonna happen in the not-so-distant future, but the local influence can be tremendous if they understand the flexibility in the final herbicide strategy and they're creative.

Megan Dwyer

And Stanley, I'm so glad you brought up the EPA's tool that they're in development because I think it is important to note that while the private sector and educational institutions are very engaged in working on providing some of these resources that EPA also isn't trying to leave us out there hanging. They are working diligently to try and provide some of these resources as well.

And some of the tools, as you mentioned, where a farmer, an applicator, an advisor can go and start plugging in some of this information to feel even more confident in what's already being done, what's needed to be done, and be better prepared knowing that these decisions are happening months in advance of application in most cases.

Stanley Culpepper

I'm so excited about the calculator, right? It's still in development. So I don't know if the end product will be where my vision is, but you know, I can envision my growers spending an hour or two with the calculator and then me taking about 10 to 15 minutes with them and we're going to complete the process, right?

So that's in my dream and it's going to vary, right? Remember, this is the complicated part of this. The way this is designed, we on the farm… and we farm in Northeastern North Carolina… we have to make a decision by for every field as influenced by the crop and the products that we want to apply.

So think about that. If you just think about the number of fields we have, the number of pesticides we're going to apply in that given field as it relates to a crop, it can very quickly become overwhelming, absolutely overwhelming.

What I do is encourage you not to get overwhelmed. Again, if we're creative with the flexibility that we're giving, those of us as educators can help you monumentally make it through the process.

And the other big picture, and this is the big picture that I think is extremely important. In Georgia for a decade now, we have focused on pesticide stewardship. In fact, we created a flagship program using pesticides wisely. We've actually reduced off-target pesticide drift by 90 percent.

That's the worst part of my job is when a pesticide drift case occurs and I have to go stand between two farmers. So we're doing everything that we can to prevent it.

The overall goal of what we're doing with herbicide strategy is to help make sure the product goes on target and stays there. Megan talked about particle drift. Megan talked about runoff. They're the two biggest ways that a pesticide will leave a field. So the bigger part of this is your listeners, your growers have to do their part. You as a grower have to understand the sensitivity or the sensitive spot we're kind of in with these products and you have to do your part to make sure you put the products on target and you keep them there.

If you look at off-target particle drift, there's a lot of credit for getting your boom height right. Boom height has a tremendous influence on off -target movement.

As does droplet size, right? So there are some positives.

We just have to work through the complexity to communicate the right information to the grower that'll make the grower better and recognize them for what they're already doing. And that's stewarding these pesticides and stewarding the environment and all the other things that we do every single day on that farm.

Megan Dwyer

You know, the other thing, Stanley, you mentioned all the research that you guys are doing, and I just have to give a shout out to you and the other extension agents and other people doing this, because we keep hearing from EPA that it really depends on the data. They want to do things, they want to incorporate new things, but it takes data.

It takes work by people like you that are out there trying to showcase the latest technology and what a farmer might typically be doing and the outcome of that. And so I think that's the other important side is having being open to making sure that it, you know, if somebody wants to come on and do some trials on your farm or bigger field scale things, that that's really important to get these things right and make sure everything is counted and being looked at in these decisions and suggestions.

And the boom height thing makes me think as well, something that we're still working through and trying to figure out, knowing that from a corn acre, especially on our insecticides and fungicides with these rules still being in draft mode, that a lot of those applications happen later in the season and happen with an aerial application. And so you get a little more limited on how you can make those changes with an airplane. So what are the other creative ways to your point that we can address that?

Are there things with a drone application that might be more acceptable and show some better results on keeping that product where it needs to be? Knowing different crops, different timings are all very important as we try and figure out one rule, one strategy that's going to work for everything.

Stanley Culpepper

Yeah, you made a great point. In my picture of success, and again, I'm an optimist. A lot of people won't be as optimistic as I am that, you know, we face so many challenges every single day on the farm. We don't need any more, but this is another challenge that we will overcome if we work together.

But I think the three key components to our success, if we're going to be as successful as I hope we are, science without a doubt. Science never loses in the regulatory agency. Science is powerful.

But then it's also agriculture stakeholders like yourself. If you and many others were not as engaged and vocal and fighting for our family farms like you are, the opportunity for me to deliver science is much less, much, much less.

So again, that is absolutely essential. And then I will say what you basically have already said, the willingness for our regulatory partners… And for me personally, that's the EPA as well as the Georgia Department of Agriculture and U.S. Fish and Wildlife, the willingness for them to visit our farms, to learn about agriculture, to visit our studies so they can actually see the studies in progress. So then when they get the data at the end of the year, it means more to them, right?

Their willingness to do that, we have to applaud because that is not something that I think was done nearly as effectively in the past.

And I'll finish up with this. I've been doing this a long time, so I'm in my 25th year.

And throughout my career with weed control slash herbicides, what usually happens is something goes bad, it hurts our farmers bad, and then we get together and try to solve the solution.

For the first time in my career, we're actually solving the solution before it hurts our growers. If proposed herbicide strategy had come out on our growers, it would have been devastating.

Now I'm not saying the final herbicide strategy is gonna be a bunch of roses, but the opportunity for us to do this without significantly harming our growers, it may be some discomfort, but without significantly hurting our growers, it's quite good, it's quite good.

Somebody, somewhere we're have to do additional research, generate additional data to help them, but again, we're blessed because of so many people willing to work together to help our family farms.

Dusty Weis

I think that's really the most important thing that we can end this discussion on here, Stanley, is the fact that we are lucky to have so many people who are willing to roll up their sleeves and do the work on something like this, because with great tools comes great responsibility.

And we all want the same thing at the end of the day. We all want to be able to feed the world, provide fuel and fiber for people in the world. And we all want to be great stewards of the tools and the environment that we have to work with.

We're all working toward those same goals, just coming at it from very vastly different perspectives here.

And, but for people like you, Stanley, and you Megan, who are out in the fields with the growers, doing the work, working with the EPA and finding a way to find common ground here, this would be a really, really tricky situation.

So if we have something to take away from this here, it's that growers need to understand that change is coming. We need to be paying attention. We need to stay flexible and we should probably have an ongoing dialogue with our local extension office or with our crop consultant, with our trusted advisors about what we need to be aware of.

But know that what's on that label might change and we've got to follow what's on the label. That's the law at the end of the day.

So thank you both so much for joining us to share some insight on the changes that are coming. I think it's safe to say that there's more to come on this topic. So stay plugged in with your local organizations and with the National Corn Growers Association, but certainly NCGA will continue advocating for the flexibility that corn growers need in this transition.

So once again, Megan Dwyer, the Director of Conservation and Nutrient Stewardship for Illinois Corn and Stanley Culpepper, extension weed scientist with the University of Georgia. Thank you both so much for joining us here on the Cobcast.

Megan Dwyer

Thank you.

Dusty Weis

And thank you for listening. We hope you'll join us again next month for another episode of the Cobcast: Inside the Grind with the National Corn Growers Association.

If you're on X, you can follow @NationalCorn for more news and updates from NCGA.

Visit NCGA.com to sign up for the association's email newsletter, and make sure you're following this show in your favorite podcast app.

The Cobcast is brought to you by the National Corn Growers Association, with sound engineering by Matt Covarrubias and editing by Emily Kaysinger. And it's produced by Podcamp Media, branded podcast production for businesses. PodcampMedia.com.

For the National Corn Growers Association, thanks for listening. I'm Dusty Weis.

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