Washington-USDA says limited resources combined with escalating survey expenses and increasing staff costs are forcing its National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) to quit – for the most part – tracking and publishing information about nationwide pesticide usage. Loss of this important service, declared the American Farm Bureau Federation, will create a serious hardship for farmers. AFBF spokesman Don Lipton remarked, “It (eliminating the program) will mean farmers will be subjected to conjecture and allegations about their use of chemicals and fertilizer. Given the historic concern about chemical use by consumers, regulators, activist groups and farmers, it’s probably not an area where lack of data is a good idea.” And agriculture will not be the only segment affected by the decision. EPA uses the service when figuring out how chemicals should be regulated and which pesticides pose the greatest risk to public health. Pesticide companies also rely on the program when they’re looking to reregister agricultural chemicals. Environmental groups echoed the concern. NASS explained that survey budget cuts have reduced the agency’s capabilities over the last decade, resulting in downsizing or eliminating programs, including collecting chemical use data on a rotational basis. Based on the need to redirect funds in accordance with the priorities, the decision was made to further curtail the NASS chemical use program beginning in FY 2007. Current funding will only allow a very limited number of commodities to be surveyed each year. Current plans are to collect data for specific crops every five or six years. Many other commodities will be much less frequent. NASS will not conduct any agricultural chemical usage surveys on crops produced in 2008. However, under a cooperative agreement with the USDA Economic Research Service, NASS plans to collect wheat nutrient and pesticide data as part of the 2009 Agricultural Resource Management Survey and publish this data in May 2010.
Transparency Across the Fertilizer Value-Chain