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Kansas Senator introduces bill to prevent EPA from further rolling back pesticides

The head of Kansas Corn says a bill that was been recently introduced would maintain the availability of crop protection tools for farmers and ranchers. 

CEO Greg Krissek says the legislation would ensure transparency and accountability within the EPA’s rulemaking process for pesticides like atrazine. “What looks like will have some pretty serious impacts for farmers and so if this would help with that process in the future, we want to take a good, close look at it.”

Earlier this month, EPA proposed label changes to atrazine, which could restrict access to it.

Kansas Senator Roger Marshall introduced the EPA Transparency for Agriculture Products Act that would prevent the agency from overregulating essential pesticides.

Krissek tells Brownfield pesticides help producers achieve climate sustainability goals through conservation efforts. “If farmers don’t have those crop protection tools, they are going to need to control weeds in a way that includes tillage, which means breaking up the soil and the carbon that’s been sequestered in the soil. It’s going to mean a lot more diesel utilized to till that soil. That’s going to contribute to more carbon in the atmosphere.”  

And, he says, he hopes EPA continues to hear from farmers about the issue.

Senator Marshall says access to safe and effective pesticides are vital to allow farmers to feed the world.

The letter says the EPA could unfairly restrict the use of chlorpyrifos, dicamba, atrazine and glyphosate.

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