CALIFORNIA & WASHINGTON, DC - As our industry addresses the impacts of climate change, Western Growers is working with its members and the industry to discuss viable and long-term solutions. In the first part of our series with Western Growers, the association addressed a 40,000-foot view of climate change, from droughts and the ongoing loss of hydropower to wildfires and the lack of an urgent push for mandates at the federal and state levels.

In this next section, we will dive into another issue generated by climate change: the growing inefficacy, roadblocks, and challenges with today’s pesticides and the accelerating pest pressures that are rampant in growing regions across the U.S.

Matthew Allen, Vice President of State Government Affairs, starts by connecting the dots for me between climate change and the issues that are arising around pesticides and pest pressures.

“The relationship with pesticides and pest pressures is a long and complex one that has been around for a while. I think the climate change piece just makes the issue even more acute for us. With the heat, for example, the life cycle of the pests is accelerating,” he shares with me. “Add in the fact that warmer seasons create longer growing seasons and you have expanded your need for pesticides or viable alternatives—and operational costs are up across the industry for growers already.”

Dennis Nuxoll, Vice President of Federal Government Affairs, adds another essential piece of the puzzle.

“As the climate alters, the change in temperatures and living conditions for pests makes growing regions more welcoming to invasive species. Pests that may not have been native to the West, or parts of the West, are now moving into the area,” Dennis reveals.

Pests have been evolving in order to adapt to changing climates; those changes are outpacing a regulatory process that takes at least 10 years to introduce more potent and effective pesticides and alternatives. California has its own department of pesticide regulation, so the pesticide registration process takes place at both the federal and the state level.

“This dual process is another thing that’s top of mind for our growers, because they’ve got to think about their five, 10-year plans, and what commodities they’re going to be planting,” Matthew expresses. “We need to have as many tools in our crop protection pesticide toolbox as possible. Not just for conventionally grown crops, but organic crops as well. Those take time to come to market, and we need to incentivize more planning and execution for that to happen.”

Dennis adds that the shift to a consumer that wants less pesticide usage—while pest pressures are up—is putting farmers between a rock and a hard place.

“We have to create more targeted compounds. That takes time, as Matthew suggests, and resources and interest to do that, especially with fruits and vegetables,” Dennis says. “The acreage involved is much smaller than our friends in the Midwest with row crops. There are 90 million acres of corn in the United States. All fruits and vegetables in the United States account for approximately 10 million acres in the entire country. If you run a chemical company, where would you invest your time, money, and resources in developing new chemicals? For our community, we tend to get pesticides as a secondary use.”

The conversation turns towards the exploration of a solution that is being more widely tapped, but still limited due to cost structures: biologics.

“There are biological practices that could intercede and help reduce pesticide pressure,” Dennis says. “In some cases, they exist but tend to be a little more expensive than traditional pesticides. How do we get more people to use those alternatives? How do we use them in tandem with what we have today?”

Collaboration with the private sector and injecting public sector capital into these investments is key, as both Matthew and Dennis share.

“It seems like all the solutions are actually our biggest challenges because policy barriers are concerning and costs get steep—all of which disincentivizes new products to come to market,” Matthew says. “As we mentioned earlier, that takes a decade or more for that research to happen and for that product to be registered.”

Western Growers is in the thick of it, without a doubt, but the first step at getting a grasp on the solutions at hand is to understand the challenge in all of its depths, conflicts, and hurdles. Please check back with us and we bring you more on key issues as the WG team pulls back the curtain with AndNowUKnow.

Western Growers