Rising to the occasion

I’m sitting in the general session of the RISE annual meeting in Tucson pondering what the future holds for pesticides and plant protection in our happy little business. The news is mixed, but (spoiler alert!) the imminent threat of having these critical turf management tools doesn’t seem as severe as it’s been in the past. Why?

First, the current administration hasn’t made pesticides a regulatory priority on the national level. With one exception (see below), I haven’t seen anything from the EPA that poses any major danger to our access to pest management tools. No big bans, no cancellations of key products, no big anti-pesticide PR campaign. The Feds have been too busy fighting with each other which means nothing good or bad is getting done. Gridlock has its benefits.

The one challenge we face is this crazy expansion of the Clean Water Act to include every damn puddle on your course under onerous permitting restrictions. Also known as Waters of the U.S. (WOTUS), the new rules could curtail both pesticide and fertilizer use but would most likely create a big paperwork hassle for applicator permits or other changes to waterways or impoundments. They figure adding massive amounts of red tape is easier than sensible regulation.

The lawyers will argue about this for a while and you’ll hear a lot of “call to action” stuff from GCSAA to fight it. Golf is a tiny player in this compared to agriculture, real-estate development and other major industries who would face enormous problems because of WOTUS. And those guys have way more money and lobbyists than we do. I’ll probably regret this, but my prediction is the final version won’t hurt your daily operations much, if at all.

The current headache continues to be local and state flash points like Connecticut, New York and other “home-rule” jurisdictions where activists are constantly launching ninja attacks to ban “cosmetic” use in schools, parks and, yes, even private property like golf courses. RISE seems to have its arms around these local firefights at the moment, but do not believe for one second that you can ignore the threat they present. You must be aware of what’s going on with your local regulatory authorities and chapters need to lead the way with proactive lobbying efforts at the state level.

The pollinator issue is a mess. Science is beginning to overcome activist rhetoric in some ways, but it remains a hot-button issue for the industry, particularly for our friends in the nursery and greenhouse business. Again, instead of taking the traditional political route, the anti-pesticide folks are trying “regulation by retail.” Rather than fighting at the statehouse, they’re taking their game to the boardrooms of consumer gardening outlets to demand “bee-friendly” products and plants. Bayer, Syngenta and others are responding sensibly by focusing on the real science behind colony collapse and promoting actual bee-friendly practices like pollinator gardens on courses and elsewhere. If you’re not involved with one of these efforts, you should be.

But, overall, the chemical industry is more concerned with margins (branded vs. generic products), consolidation (e.g., the recent friendly Nufarm/Valent and FMC/Arysta deals) and moving towards an overall plant health approach that reinforces the fact that these products offer great value not just to supers and LCOs but to communities and society at large.

RISE continues to evolve and change like everything else but, as the session (and this column) comes to an end, I know I feel better having the association supporting our market. You should too.