Agricultural interests feel left out of the discussion with the Newsom administration’s plan to phase out the use of certain controversial pesticides by 2050. The state is grappling with a $68 billion budget shortfall and the groups worry Newsom’s Sustainable Pest Management (SPM) Roadmap will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to implement and take critical funding away from an escalating war with invasive species.
“There hasn't been one moment of policy discussion anywhere on this issue, except with the advisory group created for SPM,” said Chris Reardon, who directs government affairs at the California Farm Bureau and has been gathering feedback on the plan from county farm bureaus throughout the state. “Imagine changing a fundamental aspect of an integrated pest management science and education program that’s been around for 40 years.”
Speaking in a panel discussion at the farm bureau’s annual conference last week, Reardon said SPM has slipped under the radar and few people are discussing it, even within the industry.
Lisa Herbert, president of the California Agricultural Commissioners and Sealers Association, participated in both the SPM work group and an earlier version for finding alternatives to chlorpyrifos after Gov. Gavin Newsom banned the insecticide in 2019. She said the Department of Pesticide Regulations (DPR) has yet give commissioners any direction on their role in SPM.
“There are no laws or regulations we need to enforce that have anything to do with sustainable pest management,” said Herbert. “We do not engage in the cultural practices of growers on a day-to-day basis. We don't have time, resources or efforts to do so.”
She shared frustrations with how DPR managed the SPM work group. After focusing on agricultural issues for much of the work group, DPR added an urban subgroup, creating a technical and difficult dynamic that led to tension and conflict within the group. The newer DPR staff, meanwhile, knew little about agricultural practices and the discussions were heavily weighted toward the priorities of environmental justice activists, who had a large role in the group, she explained. Yet Herbert was successful in introducing pest prevention to the discussions and to elevate it as one of the top priorities in the final report. She estimated that prevention activities—in an unprecedented year for invasive species outbreaks—are seriously underfunded by up to $4 million annually, while the administration spends as much as $85 million on sustainability programs like Healthy Soils.
Lisa Herbert, CACASAHerbert said the work group initially set out to develop a consensus around a pest management strategy but by the end DPR wanted a report that was “just palatable enough.” The discussion was “getting pretty ugly” when it came to defining the priority pesticides to eliminate and the group left those details out of the report. DPR plans to appoint a separate advisory committee to come up with a list.
“As soon as it finished, they said, ‘Oh great, everybody is on board 100% for this program and this idea,” said Herbert, adding that was “not really the case” in reality.
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In response, a DPR spokesperson explained to Agri-Pulse that the work group was diverse and multi-stakeholder and had the support of Don Cameron, president of the State Board of Food and Agriculture, and Casey Creamer, president and CEO of California Citrus Mutual. The roadmap report notes that the work group and urban subgroup “developed a North Star vision that all members agreed to” and it acknowledges that “members within each group sometimes had opposing viewpoints about how best to reach the North Star and at times struggled to reconcile their divergent thinking” but they sought to “identify solutions that everyone was willing to live with.” It goes on to say that not all members value each of the goals equally.
Daniel Sonke, who directs sustainability at Blue Diamond Growers, told DPR that the report “reflects the overlap of those visions.” Paul Walgenbach, a regional manager in the biologics division at Bayer CropScience, agreed that the diversity of the group prevented consensus on many of the issues, but he was optimistic that pest prevention and research support were the bedrock of the report.
Since publishing the report, DPR has embedded SPM into its mission and strategic plan and Herbert said it has even considered changing its name to the Department of Sustainable Pest Management.
Also in the panel discussion, San Diego County Farm Bureau President Dana Groot worried that DPR is making considerable changes based on a document that assumes social impacts from pesticides but offers no direct facts or evidence to support it. He also decried the lack of a definition for the social and environmental goals for SPM.
“A public policy decision of this magnitude cannot be made in a vacuum without all of these variables and economic considerations taken into account,” said Groot. “SPM creates a high degree of economic uncertainty for farmers. It undermines the financial foundation of farming.”
The added risk for crop production translates to higher interest rates when a farm is used as collateral on a loan but its value drops—leading to a financial “death spiral.” Groot argued it would result in higher food prices to address the risk and lead to scarcity for nutritious foods, hurting the communities DPR seeks to protect. The rise in imports from Latin American countries, he added, would lead to more food safety issues. He went on to say that the added financial pressure on farmers would drive more of them to abandon their fields, creating more habitat for invasive pests. He pointed out that the deadly and devastating Maui wildfire in August was attributed to dry grasses in abandoned plantations.
Groot argued that farmers are resourceful and innovative when they are part of the solution to a clear problem but they rarely react positively to top-down directives. He called for DPR to instead incentivize farmers to gradually transition to SPM through payments based on results.
Reardon shared that the farm bureau has been engaging with legislators on the issue and will be closely watching the state budget process for any SPM funding push from DPR. He anticipates a battle over increasing the mill assessment, a proposal that would dramatically grow DPR’s budget, though the department has stressed to Agri-Pulse that the mill increase is not meant to fund SPM programs.
“We can't afford to wait,” he said. “If we wait until the budget hearing begins, it’s over.”
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