By Jessica Domel
Multimedia Reporter

In response to thousands of comments from farmers, ranchers, conservationists and others, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released an update to its draft herbicide strategy.

The herbicide strategy, which was released in summer 2023, describes whether, how much and where mitigation of agricultural herbicide use may be mitigated to meet Endangered Species Act (ESA) obligations.

“For the last two years, the agency has been working on our broader ESA strategies and roadmap, in part because for decades we have not generally been in compliance with the Endangered Species Act as we’re registering pesticides,” Rod Snyder, head of EPA’s Office of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, told the Texas Farm Bureau Radio Network. “We need to ensure the labels that we’re producing can withstand challenges because we’ve had dozens and dozens of chemistries that have been challenged in court, and we’ve lost those cases.”

The strategies EPA released, Snyder said, are part of the agency’s attempt to create early mitigations on the label, taking into consideration practices that will reduce erosion and drift.

“It’s pretty simple actually—how do we reduce off-target movement of those chemicals in a way that can demonstrate to courts that we’ve considered endangered species impacts when these products are used,” Snyder said.

According to EPA, its goal is to use the herbicide strategy to proactively determine mitigations for registration and registration review actions for herbicide even before EPA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and the National Marine Fisheries Service formally complete an ESA determination on whether an herbicide has effects on species listed as endangered or threatened.

The strategy does not impose requirements or restrictions on herbicide use.

Instead, EPA will use the strategy when considering new herbicide registrations or reviewing current registrations.

After releasing its draft herbicide strategy last year, EPA received more than 10,000 comments from the public, so in April, the agency released an update to the draft plan in response to those concerns.

“We heard from growers we need to simplify this strategy. We’re looking at ways to try to make this a little bit easier to implement on the ground, like reduce some of the complexity. We need more practice options or mitigation options,” Snyder said. “We added nine more practices to the menu that farmers could potentially use to help meet the standards.”

EPA signed a memorandum of understanding with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to determine if NRCS practices farmers implement may count as part of the strategy.

“We’re holding a workshop with USDA next month to look just at these mitigation practices because we want to try to incorporate as many options as possible that can help farmers meet the standard,” Snyder said.

The agency is also working to reduce mitigation in certain instances where it may not be needed, like flat ground and low precipitation areas where the product might not be moving as much.

EPA will also refine its maps.

“In some cases, the maps that we have from the Fish and Wildlife Service are probably overly broad, so can we refine those to actually look at where the habitat really exists so that we’re not applying these regulations where they aren’t really needed,” Snyder said.

He noted EPA is using the herbicide strategy to get ahead of vulnerability in the courts.

“We don’t want to be in a situation where a farmer loses a tool in the middle of the growing season because the court struck it down,” Snyder said. “We need to get in control of our own destiny and make sure that we’re complying with the law and meeting those standards.”

Texas Farm Bureau (TFB) was one of the groups that submitted comments to EPA on its herbicide strategy in 2023.

“It does look like they’ve taken a lot of the stakeholder input into consideration—just trying to make it easier for folks to understand how it works and how it will affect them applying herbicides, but also giving them a little more flexibility on how they implement all these mitigation measures that may be required on the label if they’re within one of those pesticide use limitation areas,” Brant Wilbourn, TFB associate director of Commodity and Regulatory Activities, said.

Before the update, TFB sent a letter to EPA citing the organization’s concerns that EPA had chosen to “ignore sound science and easily attainable, real-world data,” in proposing the new strategy.

TFB said at the time that the broad-based models included in the strategy included no specificity and do not consider long-standing mitigation measures, practical application rates or any kind of species-specific data.

The organization voiced its concerns regarding the scope of mitigation measures, as well.

Wilbourn said TFB continues to review the updated draft herbicide strategy for its potential impacts on Texas landowners.

“It’s still in draft form, so we still have to review it thoroughly,” Wilbourn said. “There could be limitations. One of the big issues is how they utilize these maps where the species are located to determine if you are impacted by the strategy at all.”

EPA is expected to publish its final herbicide strategy in August.