The Edge September/October 2025

THE AGRONOMIST

The Agronomist: How Advocacy Protects The Pesticides In Your Toolbox

IT’S BEEN BUSY HERE IN GOVERNMENT RELATIONS LAND (otherwise known as our nation’s Capital) and things are looking up. No, I’m not kidding; I mean, things can go south quickly, no doubt, but the effort the association has put into advocacy is paying off.

No one in the room could resist laughing at that. A really good meeting with really good people. Federal employees are under the microscope as of late, and while I am sure we can find some who do not hold up their part of the bargain, the folks we deal with at the Office of Pesticide Programs are deeply passionate about their mission. State preemption of pesticide regulations is a tier one issue for NALP. Having a comprehensive, uniform set of regulations that are administered by the EPA in cooperation with the individual lead state agencies is smart policy. Although we have state preemption in the vast majority of states, we constantly have to grapple with attempts to roll those statutes back, and in those states where preemption does not exist, anti-pesticide activists try mightily to ban the products that we rely upon to protect the health of our customers’ landscapes. In support of language that is included in this year’s federal Farm Bill, NALP organized a fly-in event on Wednesday, July 16, targeting members of the House and Senate Agriculture Commit tees. Thirty-five NALP members took in seventy-eight individual meetings during a sultry summer day in Washington, D.C., to ed ucate elected officials and their staff on our industry and the vital importance of sound pesticide policy. These successes are made possible by you through your NALP membership and the rock-solid leadership of our board of directors. Developing the relationships necessary to advocate on behalf of the landscape industry isn’t rocket science, but you do have to show up and you do have to be persistent. Your support makes that work. TE

zone had to do with the herbi cide Atrazine. Since Atrazine can not be applied to cool-season grasses (unless you mean to kill them, that is) they were trying to refine their models to accurately estimate the amount that is used on turf. Good. That was easy. Then they asked me if I had anything that I wanted to discuss. “Of course I do!” I replied. Recently, there was a proposed label released for a new insec ticide, in fact, a new insecticide group for all you IPM geeks out there, and this label contains the first real hint of what EPA intends to do with residential turfgrass uses of pesticides under the Endangered Species Act. Without delving too deeply into the nuances of what I found on the label, let me summarize it by saying that we as an industry can certainly abide by what I found on that label. While we were kicking that in secticide around, BEAD’s big boss was sitting next to me. He picked up his phone and furiously texted someone, put the phone down, picked it up a second time and furiously texted some more. A couple of moments later, a timid knock was heard on the conference room door and in walked a young scientist whom I had never met. She had no idea why she was being yanked into the middle of a stakeholder meeting, and I am sure she took one look at me and asked herself, “What did I do?” As it turned out, she was the scientist who put the label together, and as soon as I told her that I was pleased with what I read, she replied, “Did you read the benefits document? It’s a real page turner!”

Recently, I received an email from a scientist at the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs asking questions about the turfgrass transition zone. It was one of those seemingly simple questions that boiled with uncertainty beneath the surface. What exactly had prompted the question? If I leave a detail out inadvertently, will that oversight come back to bite me? I reached out to say that I was going to be in D.C. and asked if they wanted to get together and kick it around. It took about five minutes to get a “Yes!” back from them. And because I knew that the Weed Man leadership group was coincidentally in town for Renewal & Remembrance, I dropped a line to Dr. Brad DeBels and asked if he would like to join in the fun. “Yes!” he said. So, I set up a meeting with them for Tues day, July 15. This meeting was with some of the folks at BEAD (the Biolog ical and Economic Analysis Divi sion), both there at the D.C. office and at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. As it turned out, the question on the transition

By Bob Mann Senior Director of Regulatory and Technical Affairs

8 The Edge // September/October 2025