Soy growers are concerned the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to improve pollinator health could have significant adverse consequences for growers with little guarantee of improvements.

The American Soybean Association (ASA) submitted comments to EPA last week and underscored concerns with the proposal this week as a member of the Pesticide Policy Coalition (PPC).

While ASA supports programs to improve pollinator health, concerns include EPA’s “one size fits all” approach limiting flexibility agricultural producers need in some pest control situations and  state managed pollinator protection plans (MP3s) need to be developed with significant grower involvement which will require more time and resources than what EPA appears ready to provide.

The comments submitted by PPC also state that EPA has not followed its procedures and policies to guarantee that regulatory actions will be based on chemical specific risk-benefit analysis, which could result in inappropriate or unnecessary restrictions on pest control tools available to growers.

“Our perception is that in its rush to ‘do something’ (for example, propose label changes before the 2016 growing season), even though numerous chemical or crop specific considerations will remain unresolved for some time, EPA has caused considerable concern for many growers,” the letter states.

The groups suggest the proposal could be improved with a step-wise approach to any program for label changes, including public meetings with agricultural and other stakeholders to more fully develop any implementation strategy.