EPA restores broad use of pesticide that is opposed by beekeepers

The Environmental Protection Agency will allow farmers to resume broad use of a pesticide over objections from beekeepers, citing private chemical industry studies that the agency says show the product does only lower-level harm to bees and wildlife.

Friday’s EPA announcement — coming after the agriculture industry accused the agency of unduly favoring honeybees — makes sulfoxaflor the latest bugand weed-killer allowed by the Trump administration despite lawsuits alleging environmental or human harm. The pesticide is made by Corteva Agriscience, a spinoff created last month out of the Dow-DuPont merger and restructuring.

Honeybees pollinate billions of dollars of food crops annually in the United States, but agriculture and other land uses that cut into their supply of pollen, as well as pesticides, parasites, and other threats, have them on a sharp decline. The University of Maryland said U.S. beekeepers lost 38% of their bee colonies last winter, the highest one-winter loss in the 13year history of the survey.

Emails and other records — which were obtained from the EPA through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the Sierra Club and provided to The Associated Press — show sorghum growers in particular had pressed senior officials at the agency for a return to the broad use of sulfoxaflor.

Sorghum growers regard honeybees as just another “non-native livestock” in the United States, lobbyist Joe Bischoff said in one 2017 email to agency officials, and by cutting threats to the bees, “EPA has chosen that form of agriculture over all others.”