News & Notes December 21, 2023: End of year wrap-up

Council of Producers & Distributors of Agrotechnology

Terry Kippley, CPDA

December 21, 2023

In this Issue:

Washington DC Meetings
USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service Meeting
CPDA Board of Directors Meeting
Chlorpyrifos Update
EPA Glyphosate Petition
Maintenance Fee Update
Update on EPA Front-End Screening Process
Save The Date! CPDA Washington DC Fly-In
CPDA/ARA Webinar Series

Washington DC Meetings

Last week, I was joined in Washington DC by Jay Vroom and Scott Rawlins for a series of meetings to wrap-up 2023.

Congressman Dan Newhouse

On Wednesday afternoon, we spent a productive hour with Congressman Dan Newhouse’s Chief of Staff, Amanda Bihl. Amanda is a DC veteran, having served in Newhouse’s personal office and most recently as the communications director for the Congressional Western Caucus.

Congressman Newhouse has been a great friend of agriculture, having served previously on the House Agriculture Committee. Before coming to Congress, Dan served as the Director of the Washington State Department of Agriculture.

Nikki Fried

On Wednesday evening, we attended a birthday party courtesy of Jay’s DCLRS colleague Shelby Scarpa for Nikki Fried. Ms. Fried is also a friend of agriculture having served as the Florida Commissioner of Agriculture from 2019 to 2013. She currently serves as the Chair of the Florida Democratic Party.

Florida Democratic Chair and former Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nicole "Nikki" Fried. Shelby Scarpa, Terry Kippley and Scott Rawlins, CPDA.

Illinois State Society of Washington DC

We wrapped up our Wednesday evening as Jay’s guests to a meeting of the Illinois State Society of Washington DC where Jay is an at-large Board member.

The Society has a long history in DC, dating back to 1854 where it has been dedicated to promoting “the history, culture, science, technology, commerce, and social traditions of Illinois.”

While there, we had a chance to catch up with Congressman Bill Foster, who represents Illinois’ 11th Congressional District.

Terry Kippley, CPDA; Anne Alonzo and Congressman Bill Foster (D-IL) at the Annual Meeting of Illinois State Society of DC as a guest of Jay Vroom, Board Member.

CropLife America Holiday Party

We were guests at CLA’s Holiday Party on Thursday night where we ran into old friends while making new ones.

Earlier in the day, I sat down with Jay and Scott to discuss logistics and preparations for our Washington DC Fly-In on March 4-6 and our Adjuvants, Inerts and Crop Protection Conference in Tucson, AZ on April 28 – May 1. If you haven’t done so already, please make plans to attend both events.

Connor Hamburg, Nutrien; Terry Kippley, CPDA; Susanne Wasson, CropLife America.

John Torres, BIO; Duane Simpson, Bayer; Ethan Mathews, Wilbur-Ellis.

Don Chew, PBI Gordon; Terry Kippley, CPDA.

Cameron Bishop, Simplot; Terry Kippley, CPDA.

USDA/Natural Resources Conservation Service Meeting

On Friday, we closed out our busy week with CPDA members and staff with a virtual meeting attended by USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service scientific staff. This meeting is a continuation of an ongoing dialogue with NRCS aimed at prioritizing drift reduction and soil retention adjuvants within NRCS’ Code 595 Practice Standards. Specifically, our aim is to increase the code 595 index mitigation values for adjuvants. For farmers who use adjuvants, this will help them qualify for enhanced benefits under USDA conservation programs.

This relationship is starting to pay off as NRCS is in general agreement regarding our data-driven approach. However, more work needs to be done and our plan is to have a follow-up meeting early next year.

CPDA Board of Directors Meeting

On Tuesday, CPDA Board Chair Brad Swillen convened our final board meeting of the year where we reviewed our 2023 activities and programs while laying plans for an even more productive 2024.

We also welcomed Wally Beecroft of Exacto and Sherry Hutcheson of UPL as our newest board members.

Chlorpyrifos Update

On November 2, 2023, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated EPA’s 2021 final rule prohibiting the use of chlorpyrifos on food and feed crops. On December 19, EPA issued an update on next steps.

Once the Eighth Circuit issues its mandate (which hasn’t happened yet), all chlorpyrifos tolerances will automatically be in effect. Correspondingly, EPA will issue a notice correcting the Code of Federal Regulations to reflect the reinstatement of all tolerances.

The court’s decision stated that EPA should have considered modification of tolerances instead of complete revocation for eleven specific candidates identified by EPA. To that end, EPA announced that it will be proposing a new rule to revoke all chlorpyrifos uses and to modify the tolerances for the eleven products referenced by the court. This will allow use on alfalfa, apple, asparagus, tart cherry, citrus, cotton, peach, soybean, strawberry, sugar beet, spring wheat and winter wheat with potential new restrictions for location and application rates.

EPA Glyphosate Petition

Last Wednesday, six environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to immediately suspend and cancel the registration for glyphosate. In the petition, the six groups asked for immediate action that would make selling or using the chemical illegal “until the EPA thoroughly analyzes glyphosate's health and environmental risks.”

The petition asserts that glyphosate’s registration violates the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act’s "reasonable certainty" standard that products “will not cause unreasonable harm to people or the environment before they can be approved for use on food.”

The petition seeks to immediately suspend all glyphosate registrations, pending completion of cancellation proceedings under FIFRA. If EPA declines to suspend and cancel glyphosate, the petitioners are asking EPA to initiate special review for glyphosate “and undertake a robust analysis” of glyphosate’s environmental and health effects.

In responding to the petition, EPA has several options. First, they could ignore it and do nothing. However, in doing so, it increases the likelihood that the groups that filed the petition will take them to court at some later date. Second, they could respond to the petition by opening a public comment period on whether to grant the petitioner’s requests. Third, they could grant the petitioner’s requests as presented. This seems the most unlikely outcome as EPA has been consistently supportive of glyphosate and there’s ample evidence that a complete about-face is unwarranted.

Maintenance Fee Update

We continue our work as a member of the PRIA Coalition and hope to resolve a couple of lingering EPA issues before the end of the year. First, we are seeking immediate clarity regarding invoicing for 2024 maintenance fees. We have asked EPA for some leeway in enforcing the January 15 due date, given that registrants have not yet received any guidance on how maintenance fee invoices should be paid.

We have also had a discussion of maintenance fee levels and anticipate that fees will remain unchanged in 2024. EPA plans to update its maintenance fee payment website shortly. We will forward any updates as soon as they become available.

EPA Front-End Screening Update

On Friday, December 15, The PRIA Coalition hosted a webinar presented by EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs on Processing PRIA and non-PRIA Applications, that many of you participated in. The PowerPoint presentation used by Rachel Holloman of OPP’s Information Services Branch is available here. Rachel’s very informative and useful overview traced the administrative steps, from submission of an application via EPA’s general Centra Data Exchange (CDX) portal, to the Pesticide Submission Portal (PSP), to the Pesticide Registration Information System (PRISM); to the Office of Pesticide Programs Information Network (OPPIN), to the new Salesforce system. This awkward combination of new and legacy IT systems has been a significant contributor to recent backlogs. Rachel shared a list of common mistakes made by applicants that can slow down applications.

Of note: This presentation tied the PRIA start date to the Milestone 1 email, which can be delayed significantly from actual CDX submission. This is not in agreement with other recent explanations by EPA staff or with the strict interpretation of PRIA 5 statutory language. EPA has since clarified that the PRIA start date is indeed 21 days after the application is submitted to CDX, as specified in statutory language. Even if an application is “stuck” in the front-end for several weeks, the PRIA start date would be 21-days after it came in, so effectively EPA could be starting months behind on such an action. This underscores the importance of processing newly submitted actions promptly, as well as addressing the backlog. In the next PRIA quarterly stakeholder meeting (January 18) will explain what PRIA actions “started” and when they “started”.

Save the Date! CPDA Washington D.C. Fly-In

Mark your calendars for the 2024 CPDA Washington DC Fly-In. Our 2024 event will be on March 4-6 where we will have several joint events with our friends at the Agricultural Retailers Association.

Learn more & view a tentative schedule

Adjuvant Advantage for the Sales Agronomist Webinar

On December 7th we had our second successful webinar collaboration with the Agricultural Retailer Association (ARA). Almost 300 registered for the webinar Adjuvant Application with Pre-emergent Herbicides. The webinar was generously sponsored by Rovensa Next and Helena Agri-Enterprises.

The next webinar in the series will be:

Adjuvants and Drone Application

January 11, 2023, 1:00pm ET