I was greatly disappointed by the recent ruling against Jeff Anderson's lawsuit against the EPA, which called for making the planting of treated seed as a "pesticide application," rather than the current regulation, which lets the farmer off the hook.  To my mind, this needs to change.


There is a small problem with this thinking.  Right now not every farmer is a licensed pesticide applicator.  If you make the seed dressing a License issue,  then many farmers will have legal issues,  and many more will then become licensed applicators.

The value of an applicators license is that is puts a value on the skill and some responsibility.  If everyone was licensed there would be no value left.  In the case of seed coatings,  its seems to me to keep that value in the hands of a small number of seed producers instead of pushing it off on the farmers. Easier to monitor and manage as it is.  What the above proposal does is just add a bunch of paperwork,  to a pretty clean process.

If we find we need reduced usages,  there are much better ways to handle it than what was proposed by that suit.  Ontario should show us perfectly.  Instead of a bunch of argue and debate over who was responsible and blaming farmers,  Bayer stepped up and worked very diligently to address the issue.

Personally I find the recent attempts legally to force the EPA to do our biding very disturbing. Seems we want to make enemies of our only defense.




Charles

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