CropLife Retail Week: Tessenderlo Buys Tiger-Sul, Bayer Legal News, and the ESA Report

Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss another merger in crop nutrition, some good court news for Bayer, and Endangered Species Act (ESA) developments.

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*Below is a partial and edited transcript:

Eric Sfiligoj: Hello. Welcome to another edition of CropLife Retail Week. I’m Eric Sfiligoj Editor. CropLife. I am here again with Lara. Sowinski. Lara, how are you doing on this fine morning?

Lara Sowinski: I’m well, thank you. How about you? How’s it going?

ES: Doing well, I mean, you know, it’s been, you know, fall here in Cleveland, in northeast Ohio, where I live. And, the other day, it was, about 80 degrees. I think we set a record for a high temperature. This late in the season and, you know, had all the windows open. The dog was not enjoying the leaf blowing, going on in the yards by me. So she kept barking. So it was, it. Well, let’s just say it was an unproductive day in that regard. But the dog was happy. That’s all it matters.

LS: Oh that’s good. Yeah. It was probably your last 80 degree day for the year.

ES: Yeah. Because again this this morning got up and it was like 57 degrees when I woke up. And then you know, I when I was listening to the radio coming to work this morning, they’re like, well and that’s the high for the day. And I’m like all downhill from here. That’s great. So that’s good. So, hey, just so now that we’ve gone through the obligatory talk about the weather, you didn’t mention Texas, but I’m sure it’s probably cool there. Probably about 81, 82, you know, nice and cold day, wear sweaters.

LS: Well, we’re actually down to high 50s. There’s a cold front coming through.

ES: So hence the fleece vest and scarf and all that good stuff. Yeah, I know it doesn’t happen often, but I do remember years and years ago, I remember I had this one trip in the middle of January where it was going down to, I think I was heading down to like Houston or somewhere, you know, somewhere around the coast, the Gulf Coast of Texas. And, you know, I got up there was a blizzard outside in Cleveland and made my way to the airport slowly and got there and the flight took off. And then when we landed in Dallas for my connecting flight, it was 41 degrees and chilly. And I’m like, well, wait a minute, I’ve gone this far south. Shouldn’t it be warmer?

But you never know. I know it happens sometimes. All right. Well, anyhow, hey, let’s get to some news of the week. So I do have some news to share. This is on the consolidation front. There’s folks, of course, in the crop nutrition space that are familiar with a company called Tessenderlo Kerley. And they announced this week they acquired another good, well known crop nutrition company called Tiger Sul, which is a North American provider of sulfur based fertilizer products. So the acquisition closed on November 6th. What’s now in the past? According to Tessenderlo Kerley, this strengthens their specialty fertilizer portfolio and will continue to help growers, provide better yields and, also make for a healthier plant for everyone.

The one thing to note is Tiger Sul’s brand name will continue under the brand name Tiger Sul. And then Russell Sides, who’s the executive vice president at Tessenderlo, said, we’re excited to welcome Tiger Sul to the team. And we look forward to our ability to offer customers Tiger Sul complimentary crop nutrition and soil enhanced products.

So again, now the consolidation going on in the marketplace, but again, this one in the crop nutrition space. So, congratulations to Tessenderlo and our best wishes and good luck to our friends at Tiger. So it’s great. All right. Well hey, this is this is a story I hadn’t gotten to, happened to a while back, but there’s been so much news and travel and other things going on.

I had not gotten back to it, but it’s still timely at this point. Of course. As our viewers are aware, over the last several years, we’ve thought many, many, many times about all the legal, lawsuits, the wranglings in courts and across the nation, for the crop protection folks regarding various products and their safety or supposed safety with plaintiffs.

Of course, our friends at Bayer with glyphosate and Roundup have been seriously affected by this, but, this this took place back at the end of August, and I’m just getting around to it now. The folks at Bayer actually claimed a little bit of a legal victory. The third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia rejected a plaintiff’s claim that Bayer’s, Monsanto unit violated state laws by failing to put cancer warnings on the label of their product, so that that was a unanimous judgment by the panel that basically said that the Federal Insecticide fungicide, and Rodenticide Act requires nationwide uniformity in pesticide labels, and that superseded any Pennsylvania law regarding warnings on the label. So this was important because this actually this decision by the Third Circuit, a court of appeals was, in opposition to some, rulings by the San Francisco and Atlanta Court of Appeals in similar cases. So based on those, you know, discrepancies between these three different lawsuits, Bayer is now fairly confident that they’ll be able to get the whole, litigation regarding roundup to the Supreme Court and have the Supreme Court reconcile some of these decisions being made by circuit courts that are in opposition to one another.

So fingers crossed, maybe the Supreme Court will weigh in and maybe we’ll finally get some, resolution to all of the lawsuits that Bayer’s had to face. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. No interesting development. And like anything, it’s just at the end of the day, it’s just having this certainty sometimes one way or the other, just, you know, not having things in limbo.

You know, particularly with pending lawsuits, you know, could really drag things out. So. Yeah. No, that’s, that’s that’s good. Good news. Yes. So obviously viewers stay tuned because of the Supreme Court picks this up will let you know that they’ve got it on the docket. Yeah. Let you know what they decide. So yeah for sure. No good.

So let me kick it over to you then. Lara, I think you said you had some news to share with viewers as well.

LS: I do somewhat in a similar vein. As you know, we’ve mentioned recently, we are working on a special report, the ABC’s of ESA, and we’re looking at, developments related to the EPA’s obligations, to comply with the Endangered Species Act and, the rollout of several strategies.

And in an attempt to, to do that, the herbicide strategy, the final herbicide strategy came out in late August. And, one thing that is unique, notwithstanding the fact that it’s a final strategy, the EPA does reserve the right as new information becomes available, etc., that some of these things may change, the guidelines, the requirements and so forth.

Indeed. American Soybean Association released in, a press issued press release on October 28th. The total of which soy growers alarmed after EPA moves Endangered Species Act goalposts. So, I’ll read a couple things from this press release, and it, really is, you know, as, we’ve mentioned likewise. November 15th, next week, Eric and I will be hosting a webinar, with four panelists on the topic.

Part of this, ABCs of ESA Special Report, in addition to the publication that’s coming out in December with CropLife, December issue, we will have a webinar on the 15th. So American Soybean Association expressed concern after the EPA imposed additional restriction on farmers, a move that seems to have followed adverse comments from environmental groups.

A new registration was announced October 18th. However, EPA lagged in releasing the final labor label for that registration. The label is finally available, and again, this was, October 28th, and with its public posting, additional unwarranted restrictions are evident. Environmental groups claimed that the number of runoff points and the size of the spray drift buffers currently required by EPA are insufficient, and in response to the comments, EPA expressed confidence in its own findings that the registration would not jeopardize species or their habitats.

Further, the agency said the draft registration was informed by the herbicide strategy, however, and the final label additional restrictions were included. So an official with the ASA said somewhere between the draft and final registration, EPA, without explanation, tripled the number of SC runoff points required and imposed a new ten foot mandatory ground spray drift buffer.

Farmers must adopt to use the new glyphosate, a herbicide. Growers should be worried about the precedent. This was, So, again, this is exactly what and I recall specifically, attending the CPDA meeting in September. Kyle Kunkel from the ASC, who will also be one of our panelists next week, mentioned this very thing that EPA, does have the discretion to make some changes, in this one, obviously not in the favor of, farmers.

So, and undoubtedly this will be something that we’ll be talking about note next week. So if you go to, crop live.com, there’s information on the November 15th, webinar there. Eric and I will be co-moderating and it’ll be nice. We, we’ll keep it PowerPoint light if you will. Truly a roundtable discussion with our panelists, including Kyle and, some questions from the audience.

So, yeah, timely development gives us something certainly to talk about next week. Not that there’s not plenty, but this is a big change. Yeah. As, as as was stated in that press release, the moving the goalposts, I mean, again, I know that was the big fear for a lot of the folks that I’ve been talking to over the fall regarding the EASA rules.

ES: And then what finally might be the, you know, the, the actual rules that the grower community will have to be following when it’s all said and done. But yeah, again, very timely. And yes, please join us for the webinar. Hopefully you’ll enjoy, you know, the interaction between Lara and I and the panelists and hopefully you’ll get some good information out of it as well.