THE AGRONOMIST
The Agronomist: Recertification Isn’t Just A Requirement; It’s An Opportunity To Learn
I ATTENDED A RECERTIFICATION WORKSHOP RECENTLY where the person responsible for that state’s pesticide program gave a one-hour talk to bring everyone up to date on all things regulatory. You could tell by the temperature in the room that what was being said wasn’t going over very well with the audience.
By Bob Mann Senior Director of Regulatory and Technical Affairs
Some of the questions were not questions at all but rather protests against what was being expected of the regulated com- munity. Such passive-aggressive non-questions are an exercise in shooting the messenger, really. After all, the legislature writes the laws; it’s the job of each state-led agency to see to it that the laws are carried out. My sense was that a significant portion of the audi- ence was there because they had to be there instead of wanting to be there. That’s a problem. When it was my turn to speak an hour or so later, I couldn’t help but give my perspective on what I had listened to earlier – “You do not want their job,” I said. Before joining NALP in 2017, I had been a certified pesticide applicator for over thirty years and licensed in six states (that was exhausting!). I thought I knew what was what but I was quickly disabused of that fallacy.
One of the first meetings I
attended was a conference of all the pesticide control officials in the United States, a group called
As an industry, we enjoy calling ourselves the “Real Environmentalists” as we actually have dirt under our fingernails in making the world a more beautiful place. But in order to say that with a straight face, we need to be completely current on a whole host of issues. The only way we can achieve that level of expertise is to be constantly learning. That was the original purpose of requiring pesticide license holders to attend a certain number of training sessions before renewal.
8 The Edge //January/February 2025
AAPCO. By the end of that confer- ence, I was quite convinced that I knew exactly nothing and that it was going to be a steep learning curve.
Our industry is constantly
changing. I think we are much more interested in the agronom- ic changes that we can put to work in our businesses – a new type of machine, a new cultivar of turfgrass, a cool new piece of software – we all like those things. But the regulatory space is changing as well and if we don’t understand that dynamic, we can find ourselves in hot water. None of us either needs or wants that to happen. And now we have to come to
grips with the results of a hotly contested national election and a suite of decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in last year’s session that together are going to change the regulatory landscape in ways we do not yet understand. Each party’s candidate was in a position to significantly affect the landscape industry, whether it be the availability of labor, regulatory policies or how chemicals are regulated. Pesticides are the ob- vious issue, but the EPA has been making noise about the formal- dehyde in urea fertilizer and PFAS as well. Each of these issues can profoundly change how we do business. That brings me back to the
recertification workshop. As an in- dustry, we enjoy calling ourselves the “Real Environmentalists” as we actually have dirt under our fingernails in making the world a
more beautiful place. But in order to say that with a straight face, we need to be completely current on a whole host of issues. The only way we can achieve that level of expertise is to be constantly learning. That was the original purpose of requiring pesticide license holders to attend a certain number of training sessions before renewal. Recertification training is only
going to become more imper- ative in the next few years as EPA continues to come to grips with its responsibilities under the Endangered Species Act. The conversation amongst regulators today is turning to how to train the regulated community – that’s you – to perform the required steps to ensure that applications of pesticides are not going to jeopardize endangered or threat- ened species. I can envision new training sessions being given by wildlife biologists that will introduce local species and habitats that we’ll need to look out for as well as sessions hosted by agronomists on how to implement mitigation strategies to prevent drift, runoff, and erosion. Doubtless, this will be painful at first – all change that occurs at a fundamental level is going to be painful – but this industry has endured change like this before. The more we do it, the easier it will become, and before we know it, we won’t even realize that we’re doing it. A peer of mine observed that we need to change our focus from being alarmed and outraged to finding workable solutions. That point of view resonated with me. TE
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