The Senate recently released its draft version of the next Farm Bill, coming in at just a measly 1,397 pages. Senator Stabenow (D-Mich.), Chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee released the draft last week, and although she will be retiring at the end of this Congress, she hopes to have a hand in shaping the major federal legislation governing agriculture for the next 5 years. It seems unlikely that a Farm Bill will be enacted before the end of the term as Congress already has a lot on its plate to finish by year-end, not to mention the upcoming change in Administrations and Republican control of both Houses.
You can peruse the draft bill here.
Defining Biostimulants – Federal Style
For the last several years, biostimulants have been growing in adoption and popularity as an agricultural production input, however getting these products to market has been challenging at times due to a lack of a clear regulatory regime. Part of the reason is that biostimulants are somewhat new from a regulatory standpoint, falling into a gap in federal and state legislation for regulating such inputs. They often don’t fall neatly into regulatory definitions for “traditional” products, such as fertilizers, pesticides, and to a certain degree, soil amendments or conditioners. While a few states have enacted laws that specifically regulate biostimulants, others tend to shoehorn them into existing laws for soil amendments/conditioners.
Some clarity may be on the horizon because both the Senate and House versions of the new Farm Bill define plant biostimulants and exclude at least some of them from regulation under the Federal Insecticide Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Each bill also provides a definition for “nutritional chemical” which will also be excluded from FIFRA’s reach. Thus, biostimulants (and nutritional chemicals) will largely be left up to states to regulate. The Senate bill defines a plant biostimulant as:
To be excluded from FIFRA’s regulation, a biostimulant must:
Nutritional chemicals are already excluded from FIFRA regulation, but these products have been undefined until now. The Farm Bill will provide the following definition:
Given that both House and Senate versions of the new Farm Bill contain these amendments, they stand a reasonably good chance of becoming law and providing helpful guidance to biostimulant makers.
