The Environmental Protection Agency is revising rules that will eventually change the way flower farmers handle chemicals, and the Society of American Florists’ lobbyist, working on behalf of growers, has been instrumental in providing the agency with guidance — some of which has been worked into the proposed rules.
The EPA, concerned about the impact of pesticides on endangered species, is in the process of updating the rules on how those chemicals are registered, says SAF Senior Lobbyist Joe Bischoff, Ph.D. Additionally, the agency is revamping its rules on how fungicides and insecticides are applied, as well as how farmers and growers handle runoff.
For now, the EPA is only applying the rules to what it calls agricultural uses, which includes row crops, fruits, vegetables and tree nuts. The rules will eventually impact the nursery and floriculture industries, which the EPA considers “nonagricultural” uses. There is no clear timeline for when the rules will be enforced for nonagricultural uses, Bischoff says, because that use involves special considerations that will take more time to work through.
The new rules are the culmination of years of legal battles against the agency, Bischoff says.
“The reality is for decades now, the EPA has not been meeting its obligations under the Endangered Species Act,” he says, and environmental groups have taken the EPA to court over it. “The courts have been getting tired of the approach — or lack of approach — the EPA has had.” As a result, the EPA is addressing that litigation risk and beefing up its assessments as they relate to endangered species when registering and re-registering pesticides.
SAF was quick to get involved in the process on behalf of flower growers. Last summer, when the EPA committed to making the changes, SAF diligently began talking to politicians on Capitol Hill and collecting feedback from growers so the agency could develop rules that help growers adopt the new processes.
That work is paying off. In a recent meeting with the agency, some of the feedback from SAF is clearly reflected in the EPA’s updates, Bischoff says. While many of the details of the changes won’t be finalized until August, “we know the EPA is augmenting its approach so as to minimize the impact to our growers, while meeting their obligations under the Endangered Species Act,” he says. “Over the past year we’ve seen significant improvement from what was initially proposed, but we’ve got more work to do.”
Kenya McCullum is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.xs
