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Jan 23, 2025
By Jacquie Holland, ASA Economist
The Final Herbicide Strategy and Draft Insecticide Strategies issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in summer 2024 could add a new layer of complexity for soybean growers across the country. These strategies would require farmers to comply with mitigation measures when applying pesticides on agricultural ground to protect at-risk species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). While some of these mitigation measures are already in use, higher costs are likely to be incurred by soybean growers who must comply with these new requirements.
Tools that impose any magnitude of ecological risk are likely to face increased regulatory scrutiny as EPA grapples with ESA compliance. This paper seeks to examine current farmer compliance under the proposed regulations and potential constraints farmers may face as they comply with these new restrictions.
ESA requires all federal agencies to ensure their actions do not harm federally listed endangered species or their critical habitats across the country. Agencies that propose regulations that “may affect” endangered species are required under ESA to consult with the federal Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) or the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to mitigate potentially harmful actions.
The Draft Insecticide and Final Herbicide Strategies are EPA’s solutions to ESA compliance, with a specific focus on reducing alleged spray drift and runoff and erosion risks. The strategies are intended to broadly reach across entire pesticide groups (e.g., herbicides) to develop a set of common risk mitigation measures to expedite the registration approval process. EPA also intended to provide pesticide users with feasible options for mitigation measures, with the goal of minimizing pesticide supply chain disruption while preventing risks to endangered species populations and adverse modification risks to their critical habitats.
EPA’s Draft Insecticide Strategy and Final Herbicide Strategy are crafted to be a three-step approach to establish mitigation measure requirements. One part of those steps requires farmers to utilize downwind spray buffers and implement runoff/erosion mitigations for a specific pesticide to be used when EPA identifies risks of concern. For this study, only the runoff/erosion mitigation measures and farmers’ ability to comply with those practices were studied. These measures require farmers to meet point thresholds through mitigations.
Prior to this report, little public information was available to determine how many U.S. farmers are compliant with the mitigations made available by EPA in the strategies and what mitigations farmers would need to implement to become compliant. This paper seeks to quantify these two important pieces of information.
Two surveys were conducted to capture minimum point values relative to runoff mitigation measures soybean producers already have in place prior to the regulations being enforced. The questions asked in the surveys mirror the mitigation practices outlined by EPA in the Draft Insecticide Strategy (Page 45) and Final Herbicide Strategy (Page 47).
The first survey, conducted July 2024, featured questions and responses centered around the Draft Herbicide Strategy (Page 28), which was the only guidance available at the time. A second survey was conducted in October 2024 following EPA’s publication of its Draft Insecticide Strategy and Final Herbicide Strategy in late July and August 2024, respectively. The questions highlighted soybean farmer use of additional mitigation practices included by EPA in the Draft Insecticide Strategy (Page 45) and Final Herbicide Strategy (Page 47) that were not included in the draft Herbicide Strategy, on which the initial survey was based.
While EPA will be requiring compliance on a per-field basis, this survey opted for a less granular approach to reduce the difficulty of completion for survey respondents. To bridge this gap, the ASA survey asked respondents if certain ranges of acres incorporated mitigation practices, including “do not use,” “few acres (1-25%),” “some acres (26-75%),” “all/most acres (>75%).” For the purposes of this survey, “compliance” was met and points were awarded only when a respondent indicated they currently used a given practice on “all/most acres (>75%)”.
The study assumes that EPA will require a minimum of nine points per field to be met by farmers to comply with the mitigation measures requirement. Following implementation, significant numbers of pesticides requiring fewer than nine points will likely be available to farmers. However, given most farmers use dozens or, in some cases, hundreds of active ingredients across their farms, we assume a farmer will eventually need a nine-point product for which they would have to adjust their operation.
For the mitigation measures made available by EPA that feature multiple conditions that span varying point options (e.g., reduction in pesticide application rate, cover crop duration and tillage), the lowest point value was assumed if the respondent indicated the practice was implemented on 75% or more of the acres operated. For example, EPA makes available three categories of cover crops, eligible for one, two, or three points, depending upon how the cover crops are grown and how effective they at reducing runoff/erosion. However, if a grower indicated they used cover crops on 75% or more of their acres, only one point was awarded. While some farmers certainly use practices in these categories eligible for higher point values, assuming the lowest point value permitted a more streamlined survey for respondents.
Finally, EPA offers several exemptions in the strategies from runoff/erosion mitigation, including for fields channeling runoff into controlled drainage structures or those more than 1,000 feet from unmanaged areas due to the unlikely result of population-level species impacts. Survey methodologies were unable to account for fields that may experience exemption from these requirements.
The first survey garnered 491 soybean grower respondents. To participate in the survey, a grower had to be a decision maker on purchasing inputs for their operation, have farmed at least 150 acres of soybeans in the 2023 season, and were in one of the 17 largest soybean-producing states. The second survey gathered 289 responses from the same individuals questioned in the original survey. To minimize selection bias, only the 289 responses from both the first and second surveys were used for the purpose of this analysis. Approximately 256,853 soybean acres were reported in the survey from farms in the 17 largest soybean-producing states in the United States.
Soybean farmers who met the nine-point minimum to be compliant with the Draft Herbicide Strategy mitigation measures made up only 4.5% of the 289 respondents who completed both surveys (Figure 1).
However, the expansion and modification of mitigation measures in the Final Herbicide Strategy and Draft Insecticide Strategy helped improve farmer compliance, with 36.7% of the 289 respondents from the second survey meeting the minimum nine-point total for compliance (Figure 2).
Under the Draft Herbicide Strategy in the first survey, the average score was a meager 2.9 points. There was a wide gap between average compliant scores (10.1 points) and average non-compliant scores (2.6 points), and non-compliant scores were on average 3.1 points further from the minimum nine-point threshold compared to the second survey.
When responses from the second survey were analyzed separately to account for EPA’s updated list of mitigations, the average score increased 5.1 points to 8.0 points (Table 1). A significant factor in the score improvement between the first and second survey was due to EPA’s addition of county relief points to the Draft Insecticide and Final Herbicide Strategies. The county relief points, which provide automatic points based on location to ease restrictions in areas where there is minimal risk to protected species, added an average of 1.6 points to the original Draft Herbicide Strategy score to improve compliance.
Point values varied widely across geographic areas, as reflected visually in previous maps (Figure 2). Compliance was not always consistent across the 17 primary soybean-producing states (Figure 3), though counties with sizeable soybean production volumes tended to have a higher risk of non-compliance.
The average respondent across both surveys met a minimum point value of 8.0 points (Table 1), but once again, there is a substantial gap between compliance and non-compliance that the average does not illustrate (Figure 4). Growers who were compliant with the nine-point minimum accrued an average of 12.0 points, while non-compliant growers only averaged 5.7 points.
When the point values are distributed across respondents (Figure 4), it is easy to see that most farmers in the survey (63.3%) do not meet the nine-point minimum outlined in the mitigation measures. This distribution highlights the elusiveness of compliance under the current standards.
The first survey, which was based on the Draft Herbicide Strategy, found that no-till and reduced tillage practices are the most widely adopted method used by growers to comply with potential ESA regulations, with 56% of all growers utilizing this practice (Table 2). Fields with a 2% slope or less were the second most used practice (20%), trailed by grassed waterways (18%).
The second survey included additional and expanded measures as outlined in the Draft Insecticide and Final Herbicide Strategies (Table 3). These results showed around a third of producers—as evidenced by respondents selecting a practice that encompasses 75% or more acres of their operation—reporting field grades of 3% slope or less (38%), applying pesticides at 90% or less of the maximum labeled annual application rate (36%), and practices from at least two categories, including in-field mitigations, field-adjacent mitigations, or systems that capture runoff and discharge (34%).
EPA also included a few mitigation measures that will be evaluated at the field level (Table 4) but, for brevity, were measured at the farm level in the second survey. Among these practices, farmer participation in conservation programs was widely adopted, with 66% of respondents reporting participation. However, it is unclear if the scope of these conservation programs would allow farmers to meet EPA’s compliance standards for the final Herbicide Strategy. Fewer respondents (19%) indicated they had implemented recommendations from a technical expert and even fewer still (6%) actively track on-farm mitigation measures.
The importance of these additional mitigations in offering farmers a variety of options to achieve compliance cannot be understated. Among all respondents, 34% were able to score extra points for existing utilization of multiple categories of practices.
In the first survey, farmers were asked which mitigation methods they are not currently using but would be easy for them to implement—without consideration of costs (Table 5). Even though many farmers had already reported using no-till/reduced tillage methods, the few remaining chose this option as their preferred way to improve ESA compliance if costs were not a factor. Cover/double/relay cropping (35%) and adding grassed waterways (25%) were the next most popular options.
Farmers were least interested in pursuing practices that would involve significant earth movement and construction. These options are likely more expensive and offer less earning potential to farmers who would also be juggling ESA compliance with profitability. On average, growers indicated that 2.3 points could be added in additional mitigation measures from the Draft Strategy (Figure 5).
Since for brevity purposes farmers’ willingness to adopt additional practices was not included in the second survey, it is hard to compare the impact of the additional practices. By adding the additional practices from the first survey to the final point total of the second survey, we can extrapolate that 61.2% of growers could be compliant with the nine-point minimum.
The updated Draft Insecticide and Final Herbicide Strategies include more and expanded mitigation measures to allow farmers to more easily reach compliance. There is a measurable improvement in scoring with the updated Strategies, particularly from the relief points. However, significant challenges remain for farmers across the country who would be required to comply with these strategies.
Only 36.7% of soybean growers in this survey would currently earn the nine points required for runoff and erosion compliance. The additional measures added by EPA may not provide farmers with enough options to reach compliance affordably.
Reduced tillage and no-till practices are already widely implemented practices that will ease the burden of compliance for farmers as these regulations are implemented. EPA’s county relief points and extra points for multiple in-field practices also provided farmers with more compliance opportunities relative to earlier iterations of the strategies. Additionally, many farmers participate in conservation programs that may be a helpful medium to communicate these proposed policy shifts, assuming these conservation programs meet EPA strategy standards.
Edge-of-field mitigation measures, including vegetated ditches and vegetative filter strips, and fields located next to filtering devices with activated carbon or compost amendments were among the least adopted methods currently implemented on soybean farms in the U.S. that would aid in ESA compliance. Other practices that were not as widely used included contour buffer strips/contour strip cropping, alley cropping, mulching and in-field vegetative filter strips.
Mitigation measures dealing with water management, including controlled drainage (constructed wetlands, tailwater recovery, etc.), adjacency to riparian (streams, rivers, lakes, wetlands) landscape and/or habitat improvement areas, and adjacency to constructed and/or natural wetlands were also uncommonly used practices in this survey. Due to the high costs associated with water management, it is likely there are significant cost barriers that would disincentivize farmers in adopting these practices.
Since many soybean farmers in this survey series are not currently in compliance with the runoff mitigations outlined in these updated strategies, higher costs are expected to be incurred by farmers not in compliance. Additionally, there is the question of who is responsible for bearing the costs of compliance. On average, 46.2% of the reported soybean acres operated in this survey were rented. For acres that are not in compliance with mitigation measures and rented, agreements must be struck with landlords about updating leases to cover costs of the mitigations.
Future work can include the impact and extent of proposed spray buffer distances on soybean production as well as expected farmer costs to attain compliance. This analysis was also performed without acknowledgement of any pesticide use limitation area (PULA) designations. One would expect that the additional mitigation measures required by PULAs—especially if those PULA restrictions prohibited applications of a pesticide—would increase farmers’ cost of compliance.
Another possibility for future evaluation would be the feasibility of a lower minimum point value. For example, if six points were the required threshold instead of the current nine, 73.4% of the 289 survey respondents would be compliant with EPA’s mitigation measures, compared to 36.7% of respondents currently in compliance at nine points.
At a six-point threshold, the average score for compliant growers would be 9.5 points. For non-compliant growers, the average score would be 3.8 points. While that non-compliant score is lower for the six-point minimum versus nine (5.7 points), non-compliant growers on average are only 2.2 points from meeting compliance at six points instead of being an average of 3.3 points away from compliance at nine points.
A limitation of this study was the usage of minimum point values. This was done to simplify survey delivery and maximize response rates. The minimum point values also bridged differences in the two survey administrations following changes in guidance from EPA between the publications of the Draft Herbicide Strategy in July 2023 and the Draft Insecticide Strategy and Final Herbicide Strategy in summer 2024. As a result, the values reported in this study could be skewed toward the lower end of actual compliance.
Additionally, soybean growers were not asked about additional mitigations they would be willing to implement from the revised Final Herbicide and Draft Insecticide Strategies. This was done for survey brevity purposes. But further research would likely suggest these additional measures would improve compliance.
Finally, it is worth emphasizing again that EPA will be measuring ESA compliance at the field level. This survey derived compliance measurements based on farmers using a practice on 75% or more of their acreage. For operations that have a variety of topography within their growing region, field-level compliance will be more challenging to achieve than what is implied by this survey, as some practices may not be feasible for all fields in a farming operation. Additionally, the survey does not capture any burden for farmers using a practice at the lower end of the 76-100% range of their acres; they are assumed to be compliant yet may have a significant number of individual fields to bring into compliance.
