By Jessica Domel
Field Editor

What started out as a complaint in California led to the removal of a popular insecticide used to fight the spread of sugarcane aphids across the United States.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the Environmental Protection Agency’s registration of Transform, or sulfoxaflor, after determining there was not enough information in the insecticide’s packet regarding the potential impact on honeybees.

The issue was brought to the court’s attention by a group of beekeepers and environmental groups in California. As a result of that decision, sulfoxaflor, which is produced by Dow Agrosciences LLC, is facing regulatory pressures expected to limit its availability to American farmers, at least in the short term.

“It’s a very important chemical to fight the sugarcane aphid,” Dan B. Smith, Texas Farm Bureau state director, said. “We do have another one, Sivanto, but this year we had to spray our sorghum twice. We used Transform the first time and Sivanto the next.”

Transform received a Section 18 exemption from the EPA under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act in 2014.

It was again granted exemption in February 2015 to allow farmers to use the product to fight off and control the aphids that were damaging and destroying sorghum across the state. Sivanto, produced by Bayer Crop Science, received its Section 3 federal label in 2015.

“The two products work on the same active site, but they’re in different chemical classes,” Dr. Charles Allen, Extension entomologist with Texas A&M AgriLife, said in an interview with the TFB Radio Network.

Smith, like other sorghum farmers, used both products to prevent the aphids from destroying the crop with their sticky honeydew.

“In order to fight resistance, we tried to use two different chemistries,” Smith said. “Without it, there’s a chance of resistance.”

If sugarcane aphids become resistant to Sivanto, farmers would be without a way to prevent the aphids from destroying their crops.

“In looking at how the sugarcane aphid has spread across the U.S. sorghum belt, we’d need to treat millions of acres of grain sorghum,” Allen said. “If we only have one product, we’re prone to develop resistance. We do not have a backup.”

Without a way to protect their crops, farmers may be unwilling to plant sorghum crops in the future for fear of widespread loss.

Update: A previous version of this story stated that Transform is no longer available to American farmers. This story has been corrected to reflect that the product is facing regulatory pressures that are expected to limit its availability to American farmers, at least in the short term.