CropLife Retail Week: Glyphosate at the Supreme Court, Landus Leadership, and Tech Hub LIVE Awards

Eric Sfiligoj and Lara Sowinski discuss Bayer’s petition to the Supreme Court regarding Roundup, changes in the leadership at Landus Cooperative, and the Awards of Excellence for 2025.

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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 of CropLife here with my denim twin, Lara Sowinski. How are you doing today? I’ve heard of a digital twin, but not a denim twin, I like it.

Lara Sowinski: Well, I was going to say with this so happens we both ended up with blue denim shirts on the video and that was not planned. Viewers, it was total, total happenstance by chance. But, yeah, I’m glad we did it. So we are we are promoting our friends in cotton, so you can tell by some of the blue and one of the photos behind me promoting them.

So yeah. Yeah. Great. Actually. Yes, yes. So, hey, of course, we’ve had a couple of guests on in the last couple of weeks of retail week, so we haven’t really done the news of the day, news of the week. So there are a couple of things that we wanted to talk about. One very, very big item.

ES: Of course, folks that follow our program and follow the industry, of course, know that there have been numerous, numerous, numerous lawsuits revolving around roundup and roundup usage. And possibly, you know, that causing, you know, health issues for plaintiffs across the country. And again, most of those have taken place at the state level. But our friends at Bayer here have decided to go, basically to a higher authority on the national level with this.

We found out about a week, week and a half ago that Bayer has petitioned to the US Supreme Court to offer some clarity on the whole issue of glyphosate lawsuits and basically the heart of their argument is that the, the Federal Insecticide, fungicide and Rodenticide Act, FIFPro, since that’s a national standard and national initiative of the labeling that, that adheres to those standards should be good enough, at the state level, that additional labeling at the state level regarding health warnings would be, redundant or unnecessary.

So, again, Bayer’s petitioned the Supreme Court to offer some clarity and rule in favor that, national standard supersedes state standards. So we’ll have to see what happens here. Laura, again, this is a case we’ll have to be following because, as I think I noted in my, our newsletter recently, you know, on one hand, I think the Supreme Court will probably do the right thing here.

But, a lot of the, cases between before the Supreme Court the last few years, when it’s involved a federal standard versus a state one or a local one, they have not ruled for the federal standards. So, just a little bit worried. But we will see what happens. Yeah. No, the, news item caught my eyes.

Well yeah. Or be really interesting to see which way this goes. But certainly some, some something to watch. Yeah. Yeah. Because again if this and I’ve had, I’ve had state association people tell me particularly the folks in Missouri, our friend Steve Taylor had mentioned the fact the other day I talked to him and he’s like, you know, they’re trying to pass a, law in Missouri that basically said federal standards are good enough for product labeling.

That state, you know, additional warnings aren’t required at the state level. And as he said, you know, there were in danger of, quote unquote, suing, like, for sight out of existence if we don’t do something. So, it’s nice to know that maybe we’ll finally get some clarity, from the highest court in the land regarding this.

LS: Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Yep. Yeah. All right. Well, hey, and one other thing to mention. Of course, folks who read the Crop Life 100 report we put out every year, I’m sure are very familiar with an Iowa cooperative named Landus Cooperative. And they’re in Des Moines. And I know we visited them with when we’ve done our Tech Hub Live event in Des Moines.

We visited their facility, their headquarters, which is their and their CEO, president for the last five years, was a gentleman by the name of Matt Karstens. But we found out on April 4th that Matt is stepping down from that role with Landus going to pursue other interests. And in the interim, Landus is going to be looking for another president CEO on a permanent basis.

But in the interim, they have named Sam Cayton, who is their executive vice president of sales, to serve as the interim CEO. And, Sam said that he’s honored and humbled to be trusted with the exciting test of leading Landis. So we wish Matt well with whatever he does in the future. And we welcome Sam aboard and look forward to working with him at Landus until a permanent replacement is named.

Yeah. Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. You mentioned, Tech Hub Live and we are hard at work putting the program together and identifying speakers and, just as a side note, our Awards of Excellence program, part of Tech Hub Live, where we present the winners each year, in the category that comprise Awards of Excellence. We’ve been profiling our four winners from 2024 on the magazine.

The cover of CropLife. Starting in February, we had Nancy Bohl Baughman, and then we had Lanny Faleide. Just got my April issue of CropLife, and Blake Matthews is on the cover, and, we’re wrapping up our May issue, which will, of course, come out mid-May.

And Lindsay Ross, the last of our four awards of excellence, folks that are featured on the cover. I just have to say, it’s been so nice to see these folks on the cover and to follow up and interview them and see what they’re up to, and see, you know, kind of like, in retrospect, what awards of Excellence has meant for them and their careers.

And it’s been great. So, really do enjoy that. And speaking of awards of excellence, our 2025 program, submissions, are due by the deadline April 18th. So if you go to Croplife.com, you’ll see, events on the horizontal nav bar there, crop down and you’ll see Awards of excellence. It now lives on croplife.com.

We added a fifth category this year for 25. So we have our educator, our researcher Award, the Legacy Award, Innovator Award, Visionary Farmer Award, and our new category is an emerging Leader Award. So, just a reminder. Check that out. Applications are due by April 18th. We’re really excited. Our colleague Olivia here at Meister Media has, really led the charge to give, extra love, if you will, to our awards winners and, in part, that’s what prompted us to.

Hey, let’s follow up, do interviews with these folks, get them on the cover, and, it’s it’s great. I know it means a lot to these folks. Again, having spoken with them and checked in. So, do check out, Awards of Excellence on croplife.comm. Get your submissions in by April 19th. Yeah, I think that’d be great.

Of course, to have folks submit. And yeah, we’re looking forward to the, judging taking place in announcing a new slate of winners and of course, fingers crossed. Maybe next year we’ll be focusing a little bit on those winners as well as we were this year. I don’t know, I don’t know. We’ll be doing cover spots.