From WWW.FOXBUSINESS.COM
The Biden administration proposed a rule Thursday introducing tight restrictions on the use of a herbicide farmers say is crucial to ensure productivity and low prices.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reversed a Trump-era rule that allowed farmers to utilize the herbicide atrazine at a higher rate, according to regulatory documents filed Thursday and reviewed by FOX Business.
The agency recommended largely altering atrazine’s so-called concentration equivalent level of concern (CE-LOC) from 15 parts per billion (ppb) to 3.4 ppb, a move that, if finalized, would effectively force farmers to use costlier methods of weed control, agriculture industry groups said.
“We believe that this proposed CE-LOC number is a number that needs to be vetted through a scientific process,” Jim Zook, the executive director of the Michigan Corn Growers Association, told FOX Business in an interview. “We believe that the proposed number that is being discussed is an inappropriate number.
“In our evaluations, it doesn’t come close to having a CE-LOC of 3.4,” Zook added. “One that we were comfortable with was the 15, even though we felt that was maybe a little too low as well and, again, that’s looking at qualified scientific data.”
Atrazine is used on an estimated 75 million acres of domestic agricultural crops per year, according to the EPA. More than half of U. S. corn crops employ the herbicide.
The average price of corn, meanwhile, surged to $7.26 per bushel in May, well above its pre-pandemic level of $3.78 a bushel, according to Department of Agriculture data released Thursday. Corn production impacts prices in other sectors as well since it is the primary feed grain for livestock in the U. S. and is processed into various products like starch, biofuels and alcohol.
“Atrazine has been around for over 60 years — I personally have used it myself,” Zook told FOX Business. “It is very adaptable to the area and is extremely important because it provides additional efficacy for some of the other chemistries that farmers use.”
Without a method of controlling herbs and pests, farmers “won’t be able to maximize the return on their asset,” he said.
In September 2020, the Trump administration moved atrazine’s CE-LOC classification from 3.4 ppb to 15 ppb, saying the chemical was a valuable tool to control weeds in crops. While agriculture groups and farmers applauded the decision, a coalition of environmental and food safety groups, including the Center for Food Safety, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the rule.
Alex Hazlehurst, an official in EPA’s Pesticide Re-evaluation Division, characterized the Trump administration rule as a “risk management policy decision” and said it was “not based in sound scien… (Read more)
