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CropLife America fears EPA cuts will slow product registrations

CropLife America is concerned that the proposed 31 percent cut to EPA’s 2018 budget will have a negative impact on agriculture.  The pesticide industry trade group’s executive vice president of government affairs, Beau Greenwood says he understands the budgetary reasons behind the cuts.

“But the work that’s done in the Office of Pesticide Programs is critical to registering existing products and bringing new technology to the marketplace to allow farmers to be more efficient,” said Greenwood, during an interview with Brownfield Ag News Wednesday.

CropLife America wants EPA funding maintained to prevent the product registration process from taking longer than it currently takes.

“Funding the Office of Pesticide Programs is so important,” said Greenwood, “not only for seeing that those product registrations move through the system, but also, more importantly, that end users, the farmers that rely on this technology, have access to those tools in a timely fashion.”

There are industry-paid fees for product registrations, but Greenwood says cuts as steep as those proposed by the Trump administration would result in fewer EPA staff, slowing the registration process.

AUDIO: Beau Greenwood (7 min. MP3)