CPDA and Terry Kippley: The Music of the Spheres (of Influence)
April 6, 2022 
With similar professional histories, the pairing of the Council of Producers and Distributors of Agrotechnology (CPDA) and its new president, Terry Kippley, seems preordained.
In Arlington, VA, just outside of the nation’s capital, Terry Kippley is getting ready for his new role as President of the Council of Producers and Distributors of Agrotechnology (CPDA). Besides some personal photographs, Kippley has several hardcover books in his office, with one, “Adjuvants for Agrichemicals,” most prominent on his desk.
And this make perfect sense, he adds, given that CPDA has been a prominent group spearheading adjuvant certification throughout its long history. “In 1976, there were only three pesticide labels that required using an adjuvant — glyphosate, paraquat, and atrazine,” says Kippley. “Now in 2022, there are more than 500 pesticide labels that require adjuvants to be used. So, the sphere of influence of these products on the entire crop protection market has definitely expanded.”
Coincidentally, “sphere of influence” is a phrase that has driven both Kippley and CPDA on their professional paths throughout the years. For Kippley, this goes back to his early years, growing up on a dairy farm outside of Madison, WI.
“That experience gave me a great perspective on working hard,” he says. “On the dairy farm, I used to have to milk the cows seven days a week, twice each day! Compared with that, what most people call ‘work’ doesn’t seem that hard.”
When he turned 16 years old, Kippley’s father, Lloyd, took his son to a Monsanto grower meeting where everyone was speaking German. “There was a man there, speaking to the crowd,” he remembers. “Now my dad didn’t normally listen that intently, but he was really listening to this speaker. So, seeing how this one speaker could influence a crowd like that, I asked: ‘What does that guy do for a living?’ and I wanted to do the same.”
Kippley ended up going to the University of Wisconsin, working at an internship with ICI America along the way. Upon graduating in 1986 with a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics and later an MBA from Loyola University of Chicago, he joined Monsanto as a telemarketer and later as a sales representative. Here, he helped to increase the crop protection producer’s sphere of influence with existing customers while recruiting new ones along the way.
In 1990, Kippley had the opportunity to join another company, Oil-Dri Corp., a manufacturer of inert granules used to deliver soil-applied corn rootworm insecticides. “I had a friend at the time that said, ‘Terry, if you take this job, you will expand your sphere of influence because you will be working with the research and development groups of many of the basic manufacturers,’” says Kippley. “Naturally, I jumped at this chance!”
Fourteen years later in 2004, Kippley joined Aceto Agricultural Chemicals, eventually becoming its President. This role gave him the chance to expand his sphere of influence outside of the U.S., working with Chinese and Indian suppliers, among others in places such as Europe, upon the world stage.
A 35-Year History
New CPDA President Terry Kippley hopes the association will be in a position to solve problems for the industry on Capitol Hill and beyond.
While Kippley was expanding his own “sphere of influence,” CPDA was working towards the same kind of goal with smaller crop protection product producers. Back in 1987, a man by the name of Jim Champion began a quest on Capitol Hill that led to the formation of CPDA. The owner of a small producer of 2,4-D called Riverdale Chemical Co., Champion was trying to find someone in Congress to listen to his concerns. “Champion was walking the halls of Congress on his own lobbying members of Congress on the Ag Committee involved with the creation of FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act) about the importance of generic alternatives for the farmer,” says Kippley. “He was trying to compete against Dow on 2,4-D and the proposed legislation around data compensation in FIFRA was too heavily in favor of the basics and would prevent him from entering the market.”
Eventually, says Kippley, Champion found an advocate in an Indiana Congressman with a large farmer constituency who understood the importance of competition.
“However, the whole experience convinced him that there was a need for an association to represent smaller manufacturers like the one he owned,” he says. Ultimately, Champion hooked up with a lobbyist by named Warren Stickle. “Together with Stickle, Champion recruited a handful of his competitors to join him to create a council that could be a voice for the post-patent chemical industry,” says Kippley. CPDA members now had access to their own sphere of influence, a role the trade group played for the next three decades.
Then, in early 2022, the paths of Kippley and CPDA formally crossed. He agreed to join the group as its new President. “It went back to sphere of influence,” he says. “CPDA is a trade group that I’m hoping will be in a position to solve problems, and that’s something that has always appealed to me. I’m leveraging all the experiences I’ve had all these years with all the experiences CPDA has had with its members and the entire industry.”
Looking Back at the Accomplishments
Today, says Kippley, CPDA is in a much stronger position than when it first started, with 44 members. “Nearly 80% of U.S. distribution for the $13 billion crop protection market and approximately 80% of the inert chemical ingredients used in agricultural production in the U.S. are provided by CPDA members,” he says. “The association members are a network of basic inert manufacturers, adjuvant formulators, distributors, retailers, U.S. pesticide formulators, and generic crop protection registrants and manufacturers who make their voices heard by working together.”
Over its 35-year history, CPDA has accomplished many things for its members, adds Kippley. One of the most important is the organization’s adjuvants certification program.
“The existing CPDA Certified Adjuvant Program, created over 20 years ago, is a significant achievement,” he says. “Today, there are approximately over 2,000 different products that claim to offer effectiveness as an ‘in the tank’ adjuvant. CPDA stepped forward and developed this program that requires an adjuvant label to comply with a set of 17 standards. The result is an adjuvant label that gives the end-user consumer accurate information about, and confidence in, the adjuvant they are purchasing.” At present, adds Kippley, CPDA has just over 200 adjuvants that adhere to the 17-point checklist.
Another key accomplishment occurred a little over a decade ago. “Around 2007, the EPA was indicating that they were going to ask that pesticide residue data be required when label recommendations were made to include spray adjuvants,” says Kippley. “It was driven by their concern that adjuvants could extend residues in crops. This action would have devastated the adjuvant industry, because the additional residue studies would have made their use recommendations cost prohibitive and or highly restrictive.”
In response, CPDA was able to work with CropLife America-member crop protection manufacturers and submit nearly 500 studies on the adjuvant impacts on pesticide residues that its members had already conducted in the past. “We were able to provide the agency with a statistical analysis of the results,” he says. “This convinced EPA that no additional residue studies were required when adjuvants were recommended with pesticides.”
And in many ways, says Kippley, these and other accomplishments tie back to CPDA’s sphere of influence upon the marketplace for its members. “Going back to the beginning, the first major accomplishment of CPDA was allowing the American grower to continue to be competitive in the world market in part by having access to off-patent crop protection products at a reasonable price,” he says. “Without the counterbalance of CPDA during the establishment of the FIFRA, things could look very different today.”
Moving Forward
Now that he is heading up CPDA’s industry efforts, Kippley has several goals in mind for the upcoming years. First up is something the association has been working on for a few years now, called the 3Rs — Renew, Reinvent, and Reconnect. “We are looking to reconnecting with many of the generic crop protection companies who help found the organization as they continue to struggle with the lack of business certainty from the EPA missing deadlines,” he says.
As part of this, the trade group is focusing its efforts on Pesticide Registration Improvement Act (PRIA V) Reauthorization. “EPA does not have the resources to meet deadlines for both PRIA and non-PRIA actions, including thousands of pesticide label amendments, label extensions, ‘me-too’ registration evaluations, and routine data reviews,” he says. “We want to ensure that there is more EPA accountability with measurable goals around deadlines, as well as create a mechanism to ensure non-PRIA actions are processed in a timely manner, address backlogs, and prioritize process improvements, efficiencies, and consistency among reviewers and registering divisions.”
From a distribution standpoint, CPDA members represent 80% of the $13 billion crop protection market. For the first time ever, the CPDA Adjuvants and Inerts Conference, to be held May 18-20 in Nashville, TN, will feature leaders of four of the five national distribution companies sharing their views on the current challenges and “what’s next?” in terms of adjuvants and crop protection.
In-tank adjuvants used to help improve the efficacy of crop protection technology represents an opportunity segment for CPDA members, says Kippley. “The current market penetration for these drift and deposition adjuvants is only about 20% to 25%,” he says. “We are looking to find a way to collaborate with stakeholder partners to increase this market through grower education. CPDA is looking to re-engage with basics and generic crop protection companies to revisit the Certified Adjuvant Program, to continue to reinforce adding language to their crop labels to ‘always use a certified CPDA adjuvant.’”
CPDA has also announced Paley Rothman, experts in FIFRA law, will be the association’s legal counsel in the future. “We are looking to increase our capabilities to service our generic crop protection members more effectively by developing a mission specific task force within the council to help them with EPA-specific challenges,” says Kippley.
In the end, Kippley says, he hopes that CPDA under his stewardship will continue to expand and streamline its sphere of influence, for years to come. “I am only the fourth president of the association after 35 years,” he says. “Many people use the term ‘adding value’ when talking about leadership. I prefer the late Colin Powell’s definition, which is along the lines of ‘solving problems.’ If people are not coming to you to solve problems, then you are not leading. It is my hope that CPDA will be the organization that companies in the crop protection space will continue to come to solve their problems.”
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