JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (DTN) -- On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency released its final Insecticide Strategy, the next step in the agency's plan to meet its obligations under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The release comes roughly nine months after the draft strategy was unveiled and one day ahead of an April 30 deadline mandated by a court settlement.

According to an agency news release announcing the strategy's release, EPA stated that the plan "identifies practical protections for federally endangered and threatened species from the use of insecticides, while providing flexibility for pesticide users and growers." The strategy identifies mitigations for spray drift and runoff/erosion reductions aimed at protecting more than 900 listed species.

"Today's action is another example of how protecting our environment and safeguarding our economy can go hand in hand," said Lee Zeldin, EPA administrator, in the agency's announcement. "We have found common-sense ways to keep endangered species safe that won't place unneeded burden on the growers who rely on these tools for their livelihood, and which are necessary to ensure a safe and plentiful food supply.

"We are committed to ensuring the agriculture community has the tools they need to protect our country, especially our food supply, from pests and diseases," he continued.

The draft Insecticide Strategy released last summer garnered more than 26,000 comments during a 60-day comment period, including more than 230 unique comments. In response, EPA made changes to the final strategy to provide greater flexibility for farmers while ensuring protections for endangered species and their critical habitat. These include:

-- Reducing buffer distances across all application methods.

-- Providing credit for any reduction in the proportion of a treated field for ground applications.

-- Developing a process to qualify conservation programs that will give growers more credit for being part of a conservation program than initially proposed.

-- Developing a process to qualify external parties that would assess a grower's farms and determine the existing mitigation points that could be achieved by practices a grower already has in place.

-- Updating key data sources and identification of invertebrate species that may occur on agricultural fields.

-- Adding a Pesticide Use Limitation Area (PULA) group for generalist species that reside in wetlands to reduce mitigations applied outside of wetland habitats.

"American agriculture demonstrates that production and stewardship go hand in hand," said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins in the EPA's news release. "This strategy provides much-needed improvements that will undoubtedly better protect U.S homegrown crops from pests and diseases. We look forward to continued partnership with EPA to ensure our growers continue to have the crop protection tools and flexibility needed to feed, fuel and clothe our nation and the world."

INDUSTRY REACTION

The EPA's news release also provided commentary from commodity organizations and other agricultural organizations.

Ted McKinney, CEO of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, stated that "numerous pragmatic improvements to the draft Insecticide Strategy have created a final strategy that can be better implemented by applicators while also protecting threatened and endangered species.

"We are grateful EPA has crafted this strategy by listening to, among others, constructive feedback from state agriculture departments, as they are the lead agency tasked with implementing and enforcing pesticide regulations in 43 states as well as the territory of Puerto Rico," he said. "The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture is eager to continue to work with EPA to ensure state lead agencies have the resources and clarity to meaningfully enforce this strategy."

Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, urged EPA to continue to refine and improve upon the plan.

"Farmers are dedicated to responsibly using pesticides, and frequent updates to the pesticide strategies are important to ensure the health and safety of America's families," he stated. "EPA understands there cannot be an effective conservation strategy as a nation without a meaningful partnership with farmers and ranchers."

Caleb Ragland, a Kentucky soybean farmer and current president of the American Soybean Association, noted that incorporating common-sense improvement into the Insecticide Strategy will help make ESA implementation easier for U.S. farmers.

"However, more work remains to be done, including reforming how EPA assesses risks to species to ensure the process is using the best available science," Ragland said in EPA's release. "ASA thanks EPA for its progress to date and looks forward to working with the agency to advance additional improvements in the days ahead."

In a statement sent to DTN, Lori Ann Burd, environmental health director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said she was "heartened to see the nation's largest agricultural interests extolling the EPA's efforts.

"I wish the final Insecticide Strategy was more robust, and we'll push hard for stronger protections in the upcoming decisions applying the strategy to individual chemicals," she wrote. "But the agricultural community's support of efforts to protect endangered species from pesticides is an extremely important step forward."

The final Insecticide Strategy can be found here: https://www.epa.gov/….

The strategy, along with accompanying support documents, response to comments and an updated Ecological Mitigation Support Document describing mitigations and supporting data that inform implementation of both the herbicide and insecticide strategies, will be available on Regulations.gov in docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2024-0299, found here: https://www.regulations.gov/….

DTN will have continuing coverage of this developing story.

Jason Jenkins can be reached at jason.jenkins@dtn.com

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