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Prepared Witness Testimony The House Committee on Energy and Commerce
Status of Methyl Bromide under the Clean Air Act and the Montreal Protocol.
Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality
Mr. Michael Mellano
Chairman Barton, Ranking Member Boucher, and Members of this Committee, we are grateful for the opportunity to present joint testimony on behalf of the nursery, landscape and floriculture industry of the U.S. The topic of continued availability of methyl bromide to U.S. nursery and floriculture growers is of huge importance to our industry. The Society of American Florists (SAF) is the national trade association representing the entire floriculture industry, a $19 billion component of the U.S. economy. Membership includes about 14,000 small businesses, including growers, wholesalers, retailers, importers and related organizations, located in communities nationwide and abroad. The industry produces and sells cut flowers and foliage, foliage plants, potted flowering plants, and bedding plants. The American Nursery & Landscape Association (ANLA) is the national trade association for the nursery and landscape industry. ANLA represents 2,500 production nurseries, landscape firms, retail garden centers and horticultural distribution centers, and the 16,000 additional family farm and small business members of the state and regional nursery and landscape associations. The Association's grower members are estimated to produce about 75% of the nursery crops moving in domestic commerce in the U.S. that are destined for landscape use. The California Cut Flower Commission (CCFC) is a non-profit public corporation formed in October 1990 by and for growers, under the laws of the State of California. Its mission is to provide a unified effort by growers to enhance the performance of the California cut flower and greens industry, by providing promotion, marketing, government education, and research on behalf of the industry. It was voted into being by a referendum of cut flower growers and is financially supported by grower assessments on the sales of fresh cut flowers and cut greens. The Florida Nurserymen and Growers Association represents Florida's entire environmental horticulture industry. The Association represents the interests of nearly 2,000 foliage, woody and floriculture producers, landscape contractors and interiorscapers, retailers and allied suppliers. Representation, professional education and marketing encompass the services provided to its members and the industry. OFA - an Association of Floriculture Professionals is a non-profit, all-industry, educational organization with more than 3,500 members representing 50 states, the District of Columbia, one U.S. territory, and 28 countries. The Association holds 76 percent of its membership outside of Ohio, and 7 percent outside the United States. Each year, OFA sponsors the Short Course, U.S. floriculture's premier educational and trade show event. I. Background On The Industry According to the USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS), the nursery and greenhouse industry remains the fastest growing agricultural sector in cash receipts. The 1997 Census of Agriculture shows that nursery, greenhouse and floriculture crop sales totaled $10.9 billion in 1997, up from $7.6 billion in 1992. This represents a 43 percent increase in sales over the previous 1992 Census. Together these crops make up 11 percent of total U.S. farmgate receipts, up from 10 percent. Some 33,935 farms produced nursery plants as their principal crop; floriculture farms numbered 21,824. In crop value, nursery and greenhouse crops have surpassed wheat, cotton, and tobacco and are now the third largest plant crop - behind only corn and soybeans. Nursery and greenhouse crop production now ranks among the top five agricultural commodities in 24 states, and among the top 10 in 40 states. Growers produce THOUSANDS of varieties of cultivated nursery, bedding, foliage and potted flowering plants in a wide array of different forms and sizes on 1,305,052 acres of open ground and 1,799 million square feet under the protective cover of permanent or temporary greenhouses. II. Methyl Bromide Use in the Floriculture and Nursery Industry Methyl bromide is a critically important part of ornamental production in many areas of the U.S. Field-grown cut flowers, shade house production of some flowers in the ground, caladiums and even treatment of dried flowers and materials such as tree fern totems (used for some vining foliage plants), are key uses in ornamental production. The diversity and intensity of cropping systems in ornamental production greatly aggravates the issue of the pending loss of methyl bromide, especially when our main competitors in third-world countries will continue to be able to use methyl bromide well beyond the U.S. phase-out, giving them a strong competitive advantage. At Mellano & Company, in southern California, we produce over 50 different crops with upwards of 20 different varieties within a crop. New crops are our lifeblood and are being introduced annually at an extremely rapid pace, often with only a few years of market appeal. Without methyl bromide, we will not be able to respond to these rapidly changing market trends. The cost of establishing ornamental crops is extremely high -- in some crops, costs can exceed $50,000 -$60,000 per acre. Methyl bromide helps insure that our investment isn't decimated by plant diseases. Methyl bromide is used as a preplant soil treatment that eliminates unwanted soil-borne plant pathogens and weed seeds. It is a general biocide, with virtually no residual activity or phytotoxicity to our ornamental crops. In addition, methyl bromide greatly reduces (and can even eliminate) weed populations, reducing our dependence on the labor-intensive process of handweeding. Handweeding is currently under intense scrutiny in California by California-OSHA, and has the potential of being banned in the near future. Such a ban could be disastrous to horticultural producers, particularly if methyl bromide is not available to reduce the weed pressures. One very important point that I want to emphasize is that methyl bromide is actually safer - both for workers and for consumers - than many of the suggested alternatives. Methyl bromide has no "residual activity." It is applied, by professional, certified applicators who are hired by us specifically to apply methyl bromide. Our regular workers who work day in and day out planting, caring for and harvesting crops have NO exposure to methyl bromide - which is not true of many of the other alternatives being considered. Many of those do have residual activity and are used over the entire crop cycle, which would raise worker safety concerns. In addition, methyl bromide is applied on fields which are covered with tarps or plastic to prevent it from escaping into the air. Once the fumigation process is complete, the tarps are removed and only then does the crop planting process begin. The same thing is true of consumer safety - because methyl bromide has no residual activity - it does not stay on the crop - there are no chemical residues to worry about. There are virtually no consumer safety concerns related to methyl bromide use. Similarly, for Florida growers, methyl bromide has been one of the most crucial tools used by the flower industry. Due to the Florida climate, without using a sufficiently clean soil to plant into, growers could not compete in the world flower industry. Growing any crop is difficult due to a variety of challenges growers deal with every day from cold to heat to rain to drought. Florida growers have stated that, if they lost methyl bromide tomorrow, they would have to shut down a large portion of their businesses, due to the fact that there are no practical chemical alternatives. Despite the fact that the whole agriculture sector, along with the USDA, have been looking for a substitute for years, no suitable substitute has been endorsed by anyone involved with that effort. For the nursery industry, too, methyl bromide is a critical tool in the production and shipment of plant material that must be acceptably free of regulated plant pests, including pathogens and weeds. Freedom from regulated pests is important toward the broad goal of safeguarding agricultural and environmental plant resources. While alternatives to methyl bromide are being actively researched, the fact remains that feasible alternatives do not exist for many critical uses that relate to regulatory plant protection. Such uses are especially important for that portion of the nursery industry engaged in propagation of plants ranging from fruit and nut trees to strawberries, grapes, roses, chrysanthemums, trees, and perennials. Simply stated, failure to adequately control regulated pests at the propagating nursery source jeopardizes the orchardists, vineyards, and other nurseries that are producing fruit or finished plants for sale to the public. III. Research on Alternatives In the early 1990s, the California Cut Flower Commission (CCFC) took the lead in funding research on methyl bromide alternatives in floriculture, by providing $150,000 to begin research projects. Since then, CCFC has continued grants over the past 12 years, with hundreds of thousands of private industry funds invested in research on alternatives. Research has involved everything from alternative fumigants, solarization, treatment of soil with steam, microwave or UV, soil fertility and amendment with green manures and biological agents. The current alternatives include fumigants such as 1, 3-D (Telone), chloropicrin, basamid and metam sodium (Vapam) applied alone and in various combinations. During the 1960s, as a graduate student at the University of California-Riverside, I worked for five years in the laboratory of Dr. Don Munnecke, one of the world's leading researchers on methyl bromide and methyl bromide alternatives. During that time, we were working on many of the alternatives that are still being considered today - solarization, steam, and alternative fumigants, trying to find alternatives from a production and economic point of view. Despite the fact that 40 years have intervened, we still have not found alternatives that are economically viable, or effective from a production point of view. Moreover, none of these products can give the control of the pests that methyl bromide can. They very often require use of additional pesticides to improve efficacy. This use of additional pesticides results in an increased load on the environment over the current scenario. There are, of course, no guarantees that these materials will remain available in the future - many alternatives being considered today would have to go through a lengthy EPA registration process before they were commercially usable. In some cases, the alternatives are much more toxic - both to the environment and to workers and perhaps even to consumers - than methyl bromide. Our day-to-day workers, for example, could be exposed throughout the whole crop cycle. Much of the new research sponsored by the California cut flower industry has concentrated on weed control, although work on controlling soilborne pathogens such as Fusarium wilt fungi and nematodes is also ongoing. Trials have been run on a very diverse range of crops, including ranunculus, gladiolus, callas lilies, delphiniums, Dutch iris, and stock, to name just a few. Although methyl bromide is used in polyethelene covered greenhouses in both California and Florida, the bulk of the product is used in field production and therefore, much of the research has been done in the field. We hope to see some greenhouse research performed in the next year on crops such as snapdragons, freesia and Lisianthus. In addition to pest control data, data on crop response in phytotoxicity as well as yield have been gathered. New materials not currently registered are also an important part of the work that is being done with products such as Midas (by Arveta, formerly Tomen-Agro) and Sodium Azide (by American Pacific and Cal Agri Products), showing future promise. However, trials with these newer experimental formulations have had mixed results in both California and Florida. Nonetheless, research continues. Even if these newer materials are registered soon, however, it will be several years before enough experience has been gathered to consider them acceptable alternatives. The use of chemicals in our industry, in California, in Florida, and in other parts of the U.S., is the subject of much research, both publicly and privately funded, as growers attempt to move toward more environmentally and worker-friendly chemicals and toward integrated pest management (IPM) practices, which also reduces our production costs. Yet in the case of methyl bromide, our industry is being pushed to rely on those more toxic, more harmful chemicals, which runs counter to all of the public policy concerns we are discussing and which our industry is investing in and is attempting to embrace. IV. THE CRITICAL USE EXEMPTION PROCESS Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of the methyl bromide story involves the application for a "critical use exemption". In September 2002, CUE applications were filed with the EPA for consideration in exempting the use of methyl bromide for 2005 when the product can no longer be produced or imported into the US. Many of the uses were for post harvest use such as treatment of nuts and dried fruits. Others were filed for production agricultural use on crops such as tomato, pepper, strawberry and cucumbers. A few were filed for ornamental uses. Yoder Brothers, Inc., of Ohio, with major production facilities in Florida, is a large, yet family-owned horticultural company that is world-renowned for its production of culture- and virus-indexed chrysanthemums and other starter plant material. Present at today's hearing on behalf of Yoder is Nancy A. Rechcigl. As a member of Yoder's technical services group, she provides advisory, extension and research support services to Yoder operations on entomology and pathology issues. Ms. Rechcigl was also responsible for the preparation and submission of Yoder's Critical Use Exemption (CUE) in August of 2002, for the use of methyl bromide in chrysanthemum production. Many hundreds of corporate hours were devoted to preparing the CUE document, not to mention to the alternatives research which the company has been supporting for over the past 10 years. Unfortunately, the international body, the MBTOC committee, appears to have denied Yoder's application, even though the U.S. EPA (after extensive consultation with Yoder) found the application met the criteria for an exemption. Yoder's application requested 69,650 pounds of methyl bromide for 2005, with reduced amounts in succeeding years. However, EPA apparently combined the Yoder application together with an unrelated application for California nursery production of rose plants. This combination was made even though the application process required that to apply as a consortium or as a group, applicants had to have the same use patterns, pest issues and production practices - in other words, the same general issues. The nomination appeared to simply summarize the chrysanthemum production practices, and the rose production practices - which clearly differed significantly. It was unclear whether Yoder's original supporting documentation was ever even seen by MBTOC, much less considered. Yoder Brothers currently has the capability of steaming 30 percent of its facility, and so stated in its application. Complete adoption of steam sterilization as an alternative to methyl bromide is planned to be phased in over the next five to six years. The purpose of requesting this CUE was to provide Yoder Brothers, Inc. with additional time to raise the capital needed (over a million dollars) to expand its steam sterilization capabilities to the remaining 70 percent of its facility, while at the same time, allowing the company to continue investigations of alternatives (Idomethane), as an additional viable alternative. However, it appears that MBTOC found the steaming to be "economically feasible" at present, based on the specific revenue and cost numbers the company provided - which were for chrysanthemum production alone, and, per the application requirements, did not reflect overall financial health or other financial obligations of the company. EPA's nomination stated that the chrysanthemum grower needed methyl bromide to treat 35 hectares in 2005 with 31,593 kilograms methyl bromide (a rate of 902 kg/hectare), noting that the grower expected the critical methyl bromide need to decline as it increased its investment in steam sterilization. The request for nursery roses in the U.S. was for 235,868 kilograms, over 680 hectares, at a 347 kg/hectare rate. (A higher per-hectare rate is required in Florida production due to different pest complexes.) Thus, the total US industry request for the arbitrarily grouped ornamentals sector was 589,650 pounds. EPA's nomination reduced that request for the arbitrarily grouped ornamentals sector to a total of 63,299 pounds total, based on EPA's assumption that the industry's needs could be met by the quarantine exemption. Further reductions with margin of error multipliers and other calculations resulted in a total "ornamentals" request of 64,843 pounds, or 29,412 kilograms. In every industry case, it also appears that EPA massaged the numbers to reach a final request figure that would not exceed 39 percent of the 1991 U.S. baseline - rather than basing the nomination on actual grower needs and data which were so laboriously and carefully compiled and submitted to EPA. In response to the EPA nomination, the final recommendation from MBTOC noted as follows: "MBTOC recommends that a reduced allocation of 14.7 t be approved for this CUN on the basis that feasible alternatives are available for chrysanthemum cuttings (e.g. substrates) and adoption of reduced dosages with emission control strategies. MBTOC noted that the industry is aware of the technically available alternatives and appears to be making an effort to adopt these alternatives. From the case presented MBTOC is unable to recommend a CUE for Chrysanthemums as steaming and production in substrates are technically and economically feasible. Roses are successfully grown in substrates worldwide. The Party may wish to recalculate the nomination on the basis of use of reduced MB dosages combined with emission control technologies and availability of alternatives." At this time, EPA "doesn't know" how it would divide the 14.7 tons, and the MBTOC application appears to state that Yoder would not receive any of the allocation. If this decision is allowed to stand, the whole application process is a sham: one of the criteria was the requirement to show that the applicant was making progress toward decreasing its use of methyl bromide. Yoder is one of the few companies that has successfully developed steam sterilization, through very significant private investments of the company's capital. This decision, if allowed to stand, will actually penalize Yoder for meeting the application criteria and trying to invest money (which could have been well-used elsewhere) in finding methyl bromide alternatives. What became clear was that the members of MBTOC either did not get the original packet that was submitted, which contained all of the pertinent information, or they did not bother to fully read it. It is also apparent that the EPA application was based on a pre-determination of a total amount of methyl bromide that EPA staff believed would not be ridiculed by MBTOC. A copy of Yoder Brothers, Inc.'s letter to a member of this Committee is attached to this testimony and submitted for the hearing record. The Society of American Florists has joined with the California Cut Flower Commission to file a joint application, covering uses by ornamentals growers in both California and Florida. We have started the process of gathering the data from Florida growers and researchers and plan to submit one or more CUE applications for ornamental uses (especially cut flowers and caladiums) in 2003. If the CUE application is considered sound it will be forwarded out of the EPA review into a series of international committees where each use will be scrutinized. The possibility of obtaining an exemption from the international community is unknown. However, based on the Yoder experience, we are not optimistic. The process is extremely costly and burdensome, and there are no guarantees that an exemption will get through U.S. EPA, let alone that the exemption will be gathered by the international review panel. Our major competitors in third-world countries, however, will continue to have methyl bromide available for their usage for several years beyond the U.S. phaseout. CONCLUSION The United States government must support the U.S. agricultural economy in ensuring that methyl bromide remains available to growers, until suitable alternatives are found and can be implemented. We cannot simply bow to decisions which appear to be predetermined and which will put our agricultural sector at a very significant competitive disadvantage with growers in third-world countries. The phaseout of methyl bromide is a critical issue for U.S. agriculture, and we respectfully request this Committee for support and assistance in reaching a reasonable solution to what is rapidly becoming a crisis for many producers, and the workers they employ across the United States.
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