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Hey, welcome back. Welcome back to this edition of the PestGeek podcast. I am Frank Hernandez. You’re pest geek. Hey, we’re going to be discussing pesticide bans. And this has been something that I’ve been talking about since I started this podcast over five years ago and I started talking about this, and when I talked about it, I was ridiculed, I was so chastised, I said you got you’re crazy what you’re saying isn’t going to happen. And I said guys; we’re going the way, OK of Europe and Canada where you’re going to lose the majority of your pesticides, and you’re going to lose a lot of active ingredients. Not only are you going to lose the chemical, but it is not going to be through the legislation of losing the chemical that you’re going to get the restriction it’s going to by bee by cities, passing bans on pesticide use in cities and in communities and in counties and in possibly even states.
The state that is leading the way is California.
California is banning pesticides, and more cities and counties are putting bans on pesticides like rodenticides. They’re banding all types of organophosphates, even in agriculture, and California is one of the largest agriculture producing states that we have.
So they are dealing with this and there is federal registration stuff going on that they’re going to be banned. But look at what I did back in 2015, Let me show you here for a second, go to 2015 here’s the podcast that I did on October 12th a pesticide ban is coming to a city near you.
Yet people told me, oh, that’s not going to happen. I said guys, I’m starting to see it. I know what’s coming where this podcast was on one city that banned the application of pesticides to lawns on residential properties. Still, they didn’t exempt themselves from government property or parks and recreation.
Yet you were not allowed to apply the pesticide to your lawn because they banned it in that city, and everybody chastised before it when I put this out, and I got more hate mail on this than anything. And if you look now, if you go to nontoxiccommunities.com non-toxic cities, you would have to see an entire list look at this of, city after city after city after, the county that has banned pesticide use.
Over 75 Pesticide Bans Are In Effect In The US
Look at this, is not a joke over 75 bans are in here right now, you can count them there over 75 bans. We got a band here in Miami-Dade County on the use of glyphosate roundup because, supposedly, It causes cancer.
That has been demonstrated that is not the EPA is finding, and we can have a debate all day long about what the EPA is doing. Let me switch over here so you can get a better look at me on what the EPA does. Reality is that bans are going on everywhere across the country, and it’s not something that is happening in California.
This is happening in the northeast, and it just happened in my backyard, where we got banned. I had the privilege and the honor of teaching about 75 Miami-Dade County employees that are going to be using the new herbicide.
The new label demonstrates how to properly apply this product and the challenges they’re going to face with the new amount of labor they’re going to need.
The effectiveness of this new product. When I asked the question, how many of you have been applying herbicides have been doing it for more than 30 years? None. How many of you, the only herbicide that you ever applied, was glyphosate? And everybody raised their hand. See, for the only time they’ve been using chemicals and using an herbicide, this is all they’ve used. They don’t know anything else. They don’t know any other mode of action. They don’t have any other training in any other type of active ingredient except this one.
So now the reality is I got to teach an entire county on how to use the new product. And there are many restrictions with these newer products that they weren’t aware that this product is restrictive. It’s less effective, so what you run into with these bans is the alternatives there are out there. People are thinking they’re going to be able to switch from X to Y, and it’s going to be just as effective when the reality is that you’re going to have to make more applications more times a year. This will means you’re adding more pounds of the active ingredient of a specific product because of the unintended consequences of it the amount of protection that you now need because this product has a more restrictive label for PPE than the glyphosate.
So now you have cities having to invest in a lot more equipment, they have to get goggles for everybody applying this product, they have to make sure in standard PPE, we’re used to this, guys.
But understand we’re talking about the landscape industry. When we talk about pesticide use, we’re not just talking about GHB; we’re talking about lawn we’re talking about an ornamental, we’re talking about termite.
We’re talking about the golf course industry. We’re talking about the landscape industry in itself doing something else. So these things that are going on that are affecting us as an industry.
Pesticide Bans Come With Unintended Consequences
It’s going to affect the homeowners and people and the property owners. I mean, just Malibu just came out where they got a whole city that they want to band every pesticide.
They’re banning rodenticides they’re going to get overrun with rats in that city, they’re going to start having viruses and diseases associated with having an over-communication.
What’s going to happen in Malibu, is Malibu going to turn into an inner-city ghetto infested with roaches because they want to ban every pesticide.
When you want to band every single pesticide, that’s just ludicrous that’s not based on science. It’s going to be based on one or two people on council that decided they have the power, and they went power crazy on this issue and lost it. There’s no rhyme or reason for it.
There’s no logical thought, and scientific thought of, and of course, California says you can’t do that. That’s illegal. The state of California, you cannot ban every pesticide you’re going to have an epidemic on your hands.
I can’t wait until they get the first, you know, all these epidemics and then all of a sudden their 20 million dollar mansion falls off the side of a cliff because it got destroyed by termites. I want to see how far that’s going to go. That’s just ludicrous.
So we got to balance the science with the facts.
So, you know, what was it, chlorpyrifos that got banned now for use it just banned. There’s no more use of it in California for crops. And I say, well, you know, its organophosphate jeez, we got so many more active ingredients than we do. I mean, what’s the deal there, I mean you got one organophosphate.
How much chemical are they using?
So understand that let me go over here again. We show you something. You got toxic cities, and we’re going to go over here I want you to see this house of Representative Bill, H.R. 230, which bans chlorpyrifos completely.
Bans it entirely in the United States. Well, that got approved by the House of Representatives that got passed. They had a ban on it on the EPA, President came out and said, no, it’s perfectly safe, and EPA challenged this decision and reversed it. I don’t know if that’s good or bad I can’t tell you I’m just telling you what the news is.
I can’t tell you to know-how. I mean, I’m only telling you what the weather is like I can’t tell you how to dress, but the reality is that that’s what’s happening. So California goes and says, hey, we’re going to ban it.
Take a look at this you can see right here get you a little bit bigger, and I’m shooting a video for my audio podcast listeners are wondering what the hell is Frank doing and what is he talking about seeing this is a podcast. No, we’re doing a video podcast now of the entire podcast so that we can give people the media that they want, where they want, and how they want it.
But California acts to prohibit high chlorpyrifos pesticide, so that’s already a done deal. Now, it isn’t like the farmers didn’t have any warning about this was coming they did. They knew about it; they are going to prepare for this. They’re doing testing on new products always.
What are you going to do about losing your pesticides
The problem is, there’s the whole not a whole lot of new active ingredients, you know, in a group and the pesticide the pest control products group Michael Burke put out a post this week you know if you’re three what three active ingredients would you fight to protect?
If you were going to lose them and some people lost their freakin mind. Other people, the majority just didn’t care, and this is the problem in the industry. You’re going to sit there and wait until somebody does something for you to bellyache about it. You’re non-responsive; this is the problem with our society as a whole.
It is not just in the past control most of society. I agree that something needs to should be done. Except only 2 to 3 percent are screaming loud enough to be heard so that things change. And that’s the problem that 95-97 percent of people are inactive.
We have a generation of Igeners who would go on social media and complain about everything, but when it comes to showing up at the table to do something about it, they’re not there. The next generation is just not there; they’re not engaged and not engaged. All the data shows that the evidence shows that.
So us as pest control professionals, that we are supposed to be involved in this industry. Well, because it happened in the crop industry, it didn’t happen in our industry. You’ll wait until a band comes to your city and then you ill just start screaming about it. Complaining about it on social media et you’ll never stop working that day to go to the courthouse and to testify and to be active and to sign the petition and to get active. You’ll do nothing about it. PCT magazine had the petition for specific bans in California, the last rodenticide banned.
Two-thirds of you say you’re not actively involved in it.
You in your old survey and PCT magazine says you were not involved. So now we’re looking at this, and say well, how serious is this problem? With the chlorpyrifos are banned in California, what does it affect?
What is the economic impact on pesticide bans
Well, here’s the economic and pest management evaluation of the withdrawal of chlorpyrifos six major California commodities, meaning six significant crops, and I said OK, let’s see what it is. All right. So we go down here, and we say, OK, what are the six significant crops where we’re looking at Alfalfa, almond, citrus, cotton, grapes, and walnuts.
So I say, OK There are alternatives I mean thirty-three percent of the pesticide using California’s insecticide. There are five significant insecticides used pyrethroids, Neonics, I think indoxacarb and I forgot one other active ingredient, but they got way more than we do available as pest control. And I said, OK, let’s look at this.
So now that the current chlorpyrifos program for Alfalfa is per acre, four dollars and twenty-eight cents an acre to spray it with chlorpyrifos. The next alternative is thirteen dollars and seventy-seven cents. That’s a two hundred twenty-one percent increase. And there are one hundred and fifty-three thousand six hundred acres in twenty sixteen of Alfalfa.
That seems to be the most difficult because of the weevils that affect the alfalfa crops. And those are much more difficult to control. Almonds are going to go from $15 to $20, Thirty-five percent increase.
That’s not a major issue now, considering that the nation’s Almonds supply ninety-nine over ninety nine percent of the almonds supply comes from California and they export about a third of it or almost half of it. I think about forty nine percent gets exported.
Citrus, we’re going to go from twenty-eight to forty-two to a forty nine percent increase.
Not a major. Grapes. Oh my God, they’re gonna see a huge. I’m sorry, not walnuts, I said almonds and raisins and grapes they went from $14 checked up to sixty eight dollars. OK. Which is a four hundred and thirty-seven percent increase in the cost of spraying grapes. I said, man is the price of wine going to go through the roof?
Because that’s my next question. Is what’s going to happen to the cost of these commodities when the price goes through the roof. Walnuts and it wasn’t almonds that are ninety-nine percent; it’s walnuts. I’m sorry, walnuts are the ones that are ninety-nine percent of the nation’s it’s a big you know, they export most of all of the world’s walnuts, especially to China and which is a big buyer of walnuts.
So you’re looking at fifteen dollars, and twenty-five cents to sixty-four is a three hundred and twenty percent. So it’s only really about six crops that get affected. Major, major problem for California, because one of these things I mean, they do a ton of wine I said, OK, let me look and see what’s going to happen with wine.
Well, let’s look at walnuts. California walnut produces 99 percent of the walnuts grown in the United States, 30 percent of the world’s production. Thirty-eight percent of the world’s production in walnuts.
Now, the biggest problem that California faces with walnuts is not losing chlorpyrifos for spraying those trees. It’s a problem that they have with the Post Fumigation that they have to do to walnuts with methyl bromide.
Check this out See; other countries won’t be allowed the product to enter the country unless they’ve been fumigated. Here’s the thing. Usually, it’s three to three to twelve hours with methyl bromide.
The next, which is phosphine, is 4 to 10 days. What that does to the crop, if they get rid entirely, and they don’t allow methyl bromide to used anymore, then we’re going to see a real spike in the cost of walnuts. And in the world.
OK. And so that is I said, OK, let me see what else I went to wine. Well, wine doesn’t seem to be grapes, doesn’t seem to be that big of a problem right now. Napa’s wine industry boosts environmental sustainability. Here is the Napa Valley Register. Napa growers ahead of the statewide band on harmful pesticides of calligraphers. And what Napa Valley says, it says, hey, guess what? We haven’t even sprayed it in a year.
They were ahead of it. They wanted to look at being more sustainable. So they notare being affected by it. Walnut growers, one of the biggest things facing walnut growers, is not the pesticide. It’s tariffs. I understand, I’m saying, hey, what’s going to happen with all these commodities coming out of California? What is going to happen with all the farmers will they need to raise their prices? There isn’t a single chatter from any of these magazines on the coast of chemicals.
I’m looking OK, maybe, you know, and Alfalfa California almonds they looking at another five hundred million pounds of producing almonds. There isn’t one chatter from any of these guys. Going to price is going to now increase from any of the commodities traders — none of these guys lower prices.
Chlorpyrifos scrutiny dominates talk with alfalfa growers. The problem with them is they can’t get their premium alfalfa. They have to sell the low quality and medium quality alfalfa, and that’s where their price has been. But when you look down here. Where this dominated the conversation, it doesn’t.
The problem that they have with Alfalfa and the alfalfa weevil is that they’re challenging to control, and with there are no other alternatives that are as good or as cheap as chlorpyrifos here’s what’s going to happen, guys. The chemical industry is going to get on this immediately, and within a year, they will be a new active ingredient to deal with a lot of this because nothing creates change.
Necessity is the mother of invention. It doesn’t kill me. What’s going to happen if we lose all the products that we’re currently using in this country? It will have to do what Canada has done. They adapted. That’s the trend. What you’ve got to think about is the trend that is happening. I’m warning you to prepare you for the trend that is coming. That Europe is effectively controlling pests in their properties and homes, and so is Canada.
And what’s going to happen is labor is going to increase because as IPM integrated pest management, you’re going to have to be integrated pest management professionals. What’s this country has gotten used to is the low chemical prices and the ability for a spray and pray guy to come in and spray your baseboards every month and charge you $35. And what’s going to happen is that going to be gone, OK?
Real IPM Integrated Pest Management Is Coming
That is what’s going to happen in this country that you’re going to have to be real pest management professionals learn real integrated pest management, and people are going to have to repair their homes.
They’re going to have to seal their homes right now you know people are like well, can’t you use a product and throw it in the attic and get rid of the rats? Yes, you can kill all the rats in there and have a stink for the rats are going to get back in because you’re not spending the money to make those repairs.
And I don’t know what people are telling me whether they’re parts of the country where people are in hundred-year-old homes are not going to get repaired. They’re going to get it done, or they’re going to be inundated with rats when the community bans her rodenticide.
When you’ve got an infrastructure in California, like in, let’s say, San Francisco, who has an ancient city. We’ll look at London, Three hundred-year-old buildings it takes real knowledge, real professional, real understanding to control a rodent problem. Much more challenging to control a rodent problem in London than it is in New York.
And yet we’re not looking at this and saying what’s going to happen? The reality is that we’re going to end up with fewer chemicals and a higher grade of a technician. This is why I’m doing this podcast; this is why I’m doing online training, and this is why I’m educating the world on IPM.
Because I know what’s coming and what’s going to happen is all you guys have depended on your little chemicals to solve every problem. Are now going to have to go to exclusion work. And sell a higher level of service, and then you” ll be paid like a true professional where you’re getting paid the twenty-five and thirty dollars an hour.
Because you no longer have people in the industry, there’s going to be supply and demand. Fewer technicians. Higher demand. I mean, that’s what the industry wants, that’s what we want is pest control professionals, right? T
That’s what we want. Yet you’re not going to get it until this happens. See, what necessitates something new is getting rid of the old. It’s that simple. But that’s not what you want to hear. You want me to tell you, no, and you should be banning together with the industry and talking about the bans and saving the bans. Look, we’ve done an entire business.
Are we started dealing with nitrogen blackout dates? Two years before, they were even there because we heard the chatter. We know what’s coming, and we prepare for it. And we got rid of nitrogen completely in our spraying of lawns and shrubs and trees, we don’t even use it, and we don’t even need it. A
nd we manage multi-million dollar properties for people who are highly demanding because they’re not needed. If you understand how to fix that soil biology, which takes one to two years, the problem is here’s what the reality in America is chemicals are cheap and available. And as long as you can buy something cheap and available. And you can apply it. Then the instant fixed and the instant is the biggest complaint the universities have about IPM training is that people are addicted to a quick, fast, cheap solution.
And it’s going to come a day where you’re not going to have a cheap and fast solution. You’re going to need to adapt to waiting, it’s another spray and prays or bait and wait. We went with bait and wait. And spring outside where we can control things. You see, there is a difference in what is happening in our country.
So I’m going through this, and I’m seeing what’s going to happen. You know, California loses peripherals. What’s next? You know, that’s from CropLife. Reality is, the next is the next thing is, do it and it’s gone.
Now, everybody has to get creative, and nothing happens into you’re forced to get creative. Necessity is the mother of invention; we”ll have a new active ingredient and a new combination. We”ll have lots more organic crops.
We”ll have something. It isn’t the end of the world. But understand, this is the new trend. It is the new normal.
This is what’s coming to America.
And you don’t you’re not listening to me, and you’re not hearing me. And I’ll continue to say this and repeat it and teach and train and exhort and exhaust myself until America gets it, that everybody in America understands it. And where we’re going, so I hope that this podcast has been helpful to you if it has, does me a favor subscribe to the channel, give it a thumbs up, you know, share it with your friends. And until next time.
Have a pestacular day.
