Why Are Pesticide Companies Fighting State Laws to Address PFAS?
Adam Nordell is one of the farmers who lost it all. After he was forced to hang up his hoe and relocate his family, he went to work for a local nonprofit called Defend Our Health, where he now uses what he calls his “unwanted knowledge base” to do outreach and education in farm communities […]
The post Why Are Pesticide Companies Fighting State Laws to Address PFAS? appeared first on Civil Eats.
What Our Investigation Revealed
Several states are trying to phase out the use of pesticides containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), long-lasting chemicals linked to serious health risks including cancer, liver damage, and reproductive effects that have already contaminated farm fields, drinking water, and human bodies.
CropLife America and Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), the pesticide industry’s trade organizations, have been working to stop and slow those efforts.
CropLife America and RISE hire local lobbyists, some of whom also head up farmer organizations and represent local farmers in comments, hearings, and meetings with legislators.
RISE also deploys a “grassroots network” of individuals who work in and with pesticide companies—e.g., retailers, golf courses, and landscapers—to contact their state lawmakers using tested “key” messages and encourages them to emphasize their personal experiences as citizens.
Beyond PFAS, when state lawmakers introduce bills to restrict pesticide use in other ways, CropLife America and RISE often utilize a similar playbook to influence legislation.
About five years ago, regulators in Maine started to find alarming levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly called PFAS or forever chemicals—in farm fields. They soon discovered the main source: sewage sludgespread as fertilizer. Some farmers could no longer produce safe food due to PFAS’ links to cancer and other health risks. Some had to shift what and where they planted, while others shut down their operations for good. Tests found water in hundreds of rural wells unsafe to drink, and families faced an uncertain future with fear.
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Why Are Pesticide Companies Fighting State Efforts to Address PFAS?
In Maine, Maryland, and beyond, the industry is using a ‘grassroots’ network of farmers, lobbyists, and other tactics to slow legislators’ attempts to get forever chemicals out of food and water.
Adam Nordell is one of the farmers who lost it all. After he was forced to hang up his hoe and relocate his family, he went to work for a local nonprofit called Defend Our Health, where he now uses what he calls his “unwanted knowledge base” to do outreach and education in farm communities and connect affected farmers with resources.
Nordell is still living with the consequences of PFAS contamination, and he prefers not to linger on the topic of the trauma it caused his family. But if there’s one positive thing he remembers about 2020, when all of this was coming to light, it’s that the state’s often fractured farming community came together.
“I was an organic vegetable farmer, and conventional dairy farmers were reaching out expressing concern,” he said. “The prospect of chemical contamination is something that nobody wants on their farm and that everyone recognizes as posing a potential threat.”
Sensing a public health and food security crisis of epic proportions, Maine’s legislators got to work. In short order, they wrote and passed trailblazing state laws to tackle the thorny problem from multiple directions. They created a $60 million fund to support affected farmers, for example, and started a phaseout of consumer products that contain “intentionally added” PFAS. Most importantly for farmers at the time, they banned the spreading of sludge, a move Nordell said drew enthusiastic support from many, but not all, farmers.
At the same time, in 2020, watchdog groups first discovered PFAS in certain pesticides, which directed national attention to whether farm chemicals might be another source of contamination.
How significant of a PFAS source pesticides might be remains unresolved, especially because different highly accredited labs have produced conflicting tests. One initial study found high levels of PFAS in common pesticides, but when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did its own testing on the same products, it reported none. Environmental groups are currently contesting the agency’s report.
“The prospect of chemical contamination is something that nobody wants on their farm and that everyone recognizes as posing a potential threat.”
Regardless of those results, a few things have become clear: Based on the most commonly used global definition of PFAS, more than 60 pesticides registered by the EPA contain an active ingredient defined as PFAS. Other pesticides may contain PFAS as undisclosed additives or from chemicals leaching from the plastic containers in which they’re stored.
When Maine lawmakers turned their attention to tackling pesticides as a source of PFAS, they encountered new opposition. Between 2021 and 2024, CropLife America and Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), the pesticide industry’s trade organizations, paid lobbyists in the state more than $100,000 to work on multiple bills, including PFAS regulations.
At the same time, RISE alerted Maine-based members of what it calls its “grassroots network.” To create that network, RISE recruits individuals who make, sell, or are heavily invested in the use of pesticides (like golf course superintendents and landscapers) around the country, provides trainings and messaging, and then sends advocacy alerts when laws are introduced in a given state.
So, while Maine passed the country’s first laws requiring companies to disclose whether pesticides they sell contain PFAS and to eventually phase out those that do, the fight continues. After the trade groups pushed for delays in the implementation of the law, legislators in 2023 delayed the phaseout of PFAS in pesticides by two years. Then, in 2024, based on Maine lobbying records, CropLife and RISE advocated for a bill to exempt agriculture entirely from the requirements. Although it initially failed, lawmakers expect it will be introduced again next year.
In 2023 testimony submitted to Maine legislators supporting rollbacks to the regulations on PFAS in pesticides, Karen Reardon, vice president of public affairs for RISE, argued that the state’s PFAS definition is overly broad and lacks a scientific basis. She also said companies were worried that submitting affidavits on PFAS in their products could expose their trade secrets, and state regulators needed more time to develop a system that would adequately protect “confidential business information.”
Some farm groups, including the Maine Potato Board and Maine Farm Bureau, also oppose the rules for PFAS in pesticides and have called for the agricultural exemption, citing the fact that losing access to certain pesticides could hurt the state’s farmers. In arguing for an exemption for agriculture last March, Donald Flannery, then the executive director of the Maine Potato Board, cited the economic value Maine’s farmers bring to the state. He noted that pesticides used in Maine “are all approved and licensed by EPA,” and said that while he acknowledged the need to clean up PFAS pollution, business and industry should be allowed to move forward in the meantime.
If pesticides are not exempt from PFAS regulations, he said, “there is risk of losing products, which will have a negative impact on our ability to grow and protect our crops.”
Supporters of the PFAS regulations dispute that idea because the law contains a safeguard allowing farmers to use pesticides that contain PFAS if there is a “currently unavoidable use.” (For example, if a farmer shows there is no alternative product that can address a pest issue they face.)
A Well-Worn Playbook
The battle over regulating PFAS in pesticides in Maine looks a lot like another heating up in Maryland. In fact, it illustrates a scenario repeated in states nationwide each year, where the pesticide industry activates a well-worn playbook in an effort to stop restrictions on pesticide use that are intended to address a broad range of impacts.And it involves some of the same tactics Civil Eats reported on in this series, in our story on Bayer’s lobbying efforts to pass laws limiting their liability for alleged harms caused by glyphosate.
First, CropLife, RISE, and the companies they represent fund state-level lobbying. At the same time, they activate individuals within companies that sell and use pesticides to advocate for what the companies want. Lastly, they align with farmer organizations that likely have more clout in the eyes of lawmakers and the public.
Rick Zimmerman, a New York lobbyist who has represented both pesticide companies and farm groups to oppose state pesticide restrictions, said that alignment was not about using farmer capital. Instead, he said, it happens because farmer groups and the pesticide industry are generally opposed to state governments getting involved in the regulation of farm chemicals. “The various organizations and companies that I represented are on common ground,” he said. “It’s just a natural opportunity for organizations and companies with similar interests to be able to collaborate and work together.”
However, whether the issue is neonicotinoid use in New York or small towns in Colorado passing their own pesticide laws, the strategy has real impacts. In the case of PFAS, Nordell and others said that it could mean consequences for farmers, farmworkers, and broader communities.
“Are there large out-of-state corporations that have a financial incentive engendering opposition to [Maine’s pesticide] laws? Yes, certainly. They show up in committee every session, and I think there’s a lot of misinformation about what will happen as we regulate PFAS out of the economy.”
Maine’s initial assessment found close to 1,500 pesticide products that are made with an active ingredient that meets the state’s definition of PFAS. Nordell said that while the contamination from sludge was relatively easy to test and trace, pesticides may not be as visible as a source of PFAS.
“We should really think about farmworkers who are spraying the pesticides. We should think about the neighbors of the farmers who depend on clean water like we all do. All of us are dependent on a clean food system. When, for the sake of commerce, we turn a blind eye to environmental toxins, we all suffer in any scenario—but certainly when we’re talking about the safety of the food supply,” Nordell said. “Are there large out-of-state corporations that have a financial incentive engendering opposition to [Maine’s] laws? Yes, certainly. They show up in committee every session, and I think there’s a lot of misinformation about what will happen as we regulate PFAS out of the economy.”
Representatives from CropLife America and RISE did not respond to Civil Eats’ repeated requests for interviews, or to detailed questions sent asking for their comments on points covered in this article.
CropLife and RISE Lead the Way
While Maine grappled with PFAS within its borders, other sources of PFAS, like fire-fighting foam and takeoutcontainers, entered the national conversation. PFAS pollution was increasingly measured in drinking water and human bodies, and information on the health risks linked to exposure to common PFAS like PFOA and PFOS, even at very low levels, began to accumulate.
A few states to the south, Maryland has also been trying to stay ahead of the game, and the Maryland Pesticide Education Network (MPEN) is central to that effort. MPEN has been one of the most active pesticide watchdog groups in the country for three decades, and over the last few years, they turned their attention to PFAS.
PFAS expert Linda Birnbaum is a toxicologist who spent 20 years at the EPA and directed the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. As she put it during MPEN’s annual conference in November, “You give me a physiological system, and it’s likely there will be evidence that PFAS disrupt it,” she said, pointing to associated harms including kidney cancer, liver toxicity, high cholesterol, and birth defects.
Even so, Ruth Berlin, MPEN’s executive director, was not surprised when CropLife and RISE showed up earlier this year, after Delegate Sheila Ruth introduced a state law to ban selling pesticides that contain PFAS as an active ingredient starting in June 2025.
Berlin said that RISE representatives came with many of the same talking points they’d used to fight previous pesticide restrictions. For example, if lawmakers take away the use of any pesticide, “they’re going to destroy farming. They’re going to destroy public health. And it’s safe because EPA vets these pesticides.”
CropLife America is a well-known trade association that advances the interests of farm chemical giants. RISE presents itself as a separate organization that represents the “specialty” pesticide industry and tends to work on the off-farm side of things. They operate under the same 501(c)(6) and share a D.C. address. They hold joint conferencesand share lobbyists .
But RISE flies more under the radar than CropLife America, even though it played a pivotal role in a coalition that helped pass laws now on the books in more than 40 states that prevent local governments from further restricting pesticide use. Those laws make it illegal, for example, for a given city council to ban pesticide spraying at schools.
Astroturfing 101: Creating a ‘Grassroots’ Network
Developing and operating its “grassroots network” is key to how RISE responds to state laws.
As RISE’s director of state affairs, Jon Gaeta, explained in a webinar at the start of 2022, “When there’s a regulatory issue at the state level, RISE is ready to spring into action.”
“This committee is very interesting because we do have what I like to call ‘activist legislators’ . . . that truly do believe in the environmental cause, and, unfortunately, they have run a significant amount of pesticide legislation that can be detrimental to our industry.”
During the presentation, Gaeta showed participants where that was currently happening. He flagged Maine as a “battleground situation,” particularly with pesticide regulation bills coming out of the state’s committee on agriculture, conservation, and forestry.
“This committee is very interesting because we do have what I like to call ‘activist legislators,’” he said. “These are legislators that truly do believe in the environmental cause, and, unfortunately, they have run a significant amount of pesticide legislation that can be detrimental to our industry.”
However, Gaeta noted that RISE had been able to leverage the fact that the committee provides easy opportunities for testimony. “We had a lot of great people show up last year and tell their stories about how they use certain pesticides and what they do for a living and that really does make a difference,” he said.
Gaeta pointed to Colorado as another focal point. RISE was anticipating that lawmakers there would try to pass a bill that would again allow local communities to restrict pesticide use where they saw fit. “This is going to be an uphill battle,” he said. “We really do need folks to flex their grassroots muscle in Colorado.”
Kate Burgess, conservation manager for the National Council of Environmental Legislators, tracks state pesticidelaws around the country. She pointed to Colorado as “an example that saw intense lobbying from the pesticide industry.”
The Colorado bill failed to gain traction, and RISE touted its role in its 2024 annual report: “With mounting political pressure for local control, 36 pesticide applicators showed up to testify in person against the bill. Leveraging these voices, our in-state lobbyist managed the vote count throughout the session, ultimately preventing a full floor vote in both legislative chambers.”
Two screenshots from the RISE 2024 Annual Report. At left, a “legislative heat map” showing the states where the most bills were introduced that could affect the pesticide industry. Right: A list of “successes in the states” that notes how the group’s targeted lobbying efforts tracked 684 bills nationwide, and through lobbying pressure in Colorado was able to prevent a vote on the state’s pesticide preemption law.
Ensuring those applicators showed up with effective talking points is a key function of RISE’s grassroots network. During another 2022 RISE webinar on messaging, McGavock Edwards, a senior vice president at PR firm Eckel & Vaughn, presented key messages that would later be provided to members in a toolkit.
The messages had been developed using RISE public survey results and tested for resonance. They are also prominent on RISE’s public-facing website. They include that pesticides improve quality of life by enabling green spaces like athletic fields and by eliminating invasive species, and that they benefit public health by controlling disease-carrying insects like mosquitos and ticks.
At left, a screenshot from a RISE webinar spotlighting the key messages the group asks their network of advocates to use when communicating with policymakers. At right: A screenshot of a RISE webinar with Jon Gaeta showing how members of the group’s advocacy network can get involved.
The National Association of Landscape Professionals, a RISE member, deployed several of those messages in its comments submitted in opposition to the Colorado law. It also included that, “Experts at the Environmental Protection Agency rigorously evaluate each pesticide’s active ingredients for human and environmental safety and efficacy before deciding to register the product for sale and use.”
That language is similar to points on a list of five key regulatory messages provided in the 2022 RISE messaging webinar by Karen Reardon, vice president of public affairs at the organization. They were selected as being especially resonant based on the results of the RISE survey. “These are the ones that work,” she said, mentioning, specifically, that they’d also tested the word “rigorous.”
In Maryland, the same language was applied to argue against phasing out pesticides that contain PFAS. “EPA subjects all new pesticide products to rigorous human health and environmental review and testing requirements to satisfy these standards for registration,” Reardon wrote in RISE’s testimony.
Some of RISE’s grassroots training webinars are created and presented in conjunction with CropLife America, but CropLife also does its own trainings of industry professionals who advocate for pesticides in state legislatures.
In a 2021 grassroots advocacy webinar hosted by RISE and CropLife America, Leslie Garcia, manager of sustainability and stewardship at Valent USA, a California-based pesticide maker owned by Japanese chemical giant Sumimoto Chemical Company, talked about bringing the CropLife AgVocate training program to employees at Valent.
In particular, she said, Valent focused on training employees in departments such as IT and finance, who might not have expertise in agriculture or chemistry and “who aren’t aways aware of the legislative threats to our industry or how to be a voice for the industry within their own personal networks,” Garcia said. After a series of trainings at Valent, she reported in the webinar, 80 percent of employees signed up for the CropLife America “Call-to-Action Network.”
CropLife also works closely with the Clyde Group, a D.C.-based branding and communications agency, to train advocates and affect state laws. According to Clyde’s website, its team has done more than 100 CropLife trainings “to prepare advocates to confidently speak to their elected officials, give testimonies, and engage media.” They have also “engaged advocates to speak” on CropLife’s behalf in 15 states.
In October 2022, the California Association for Pest Control Advisors dedicated more than a day of its annual conference to advocacy training. There, Anthony LaFauce from the Clyde Group told the pest control advisors that they should never show up to advocate in a business suit. Instead, he said, they should dress the part of a farmer.
Farmer or Pesticide Lobbyist?
Back in Maine, Representative Bill Pluecker, an Independent, is one of the “activist legislators” Gaeta referred to in the RISE webinar. Pluecker is an active farmer who has served in the House of Representatives since 2018 and also works for the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. For several years, he’s been one of the lawmakers leading the charge to get pesticides that contain PFAS out of Maine.
“PFAS is something that Mainers across the political spectrum are paying attention to,” he told Civil Eats. This is because, in Maine as elsewhere, contamination extends beyond farms: “We have large chunks of area where not only can you not eat the fish, but you also can’t eat the turkey, and you can’t eat the deer.”
While not everyone agrees on exactly what bans on PFAS in pesticides should look like, Pluecker said farmers have rarely shown up to oppose the regulations. Instead, he said it always seemed to be representatives of CropLife and RISE.
But Pluecker added that heading into the 2025 legislative session, it seems like the industry is working harder to leverage farmer voices on the issue, because of the political sway they hold. When the session starts, he expects exempting agriculture from the rules on PFAS in pesticides may be back on the table.
At the end of 2023, Julie Ann Smith, former executive director of the Maine Farm Bureau, posted on her LinkedIn that she had started as a lobbyist for a new advocacy organization called the Maine Farmers Coalition. The first publicly available record of the organization’s website is from January 2024, where it says the organization “represents the backbone of the state’s agricultural sector” and lists two members, a large potato company that spans farms and processing and the state’s biggest wild blueberry company.
In March, Smith testified at a hearing on behalf of Maine Farmers Coalition in support of exempting pesticides from PFAS regulations. Smith said the farmers she represents understand concerns surrounding PFAS and their potential health effects but that the EPA has already implemented a roadmap to address PFAS pollution.
Exempting pesticides “would ensure that farmers are still able to grow and protect their crops and strike a balance between protecting the environment and ensuring food security for all,” she said. In April, the Maine Farmers Coalition hosted an online meeting for farmers. PFAS was on a list of discussion topics related to “critical legislation that will impact your farm.”
In August, according to an email provided to Civil Eats, Smith reached out to Maine Senators Henry Ingwersen and Tracy Brenner and Representatives Lori Gramlich and Bill Pluecker, from her Maine Farmers Coalition email, to try to organize a dinner with industry representatives from Syngenta, a global pesticide giant that is a subsidiary of ChemChina. Smith said she would review questions from Civil Eats but did not respond to an email that provided detailed questions by press time.
Syngenta did not report lobbying in Maine last year, but it has been active in efforts to slow the implementation of PFAS restrictions in the past. In 2023, CropLife and RISE were pushing the Maine Board of Pesticides to delay reporting requirements for PFAS in pesticides.
When the Board failed to extend the deadline, Syngenta declared in a letter to its distributors and retailers that it would not re-register its products in the state going forward, because reporting on PFAS in their products would pose “too high of a risk” that their formulas would be disclosed.
“Although the BPC [Board of Pesticides Control] confirmed that such information must be held confidential as a matter of law, the BPC has not provided sufficient assurances regarding how it could ensure the protection of this information. Without confidence in that process, the potential economic and competitive harm that would result from such a disclosure (inadvertent or otherwise) is too high of a risk,” wrote Vern Hawkins, president of Syngenta Crop Protection.
Pluecker called the move a “threat” the industry used to try to get regulators to roll back the requirements. According to state records, Syngenta did register a long list of its pesticides for use in the state in 2024. A Syngenta representative said the company would review detailed questions from Civil Eats, including on whether the company is affiliated with Maine Farmers Coalition in any way and why they changed course on registration.
After several follow-up emails from Civil Eats, she said, “We are to unable to help you with this story at this time.“
Meanwhile, between 2022 and 2024, state records show CropLife America and RISE employed the same lobbyists from Mitchell Tardy Jackson, a Maine lobbying firm, to convince lawmakers to oppose multiple pesticide restrictions, including regulating PFAS. Mitchell Tardy Jackson also lobbies for the Maine Potato Board.
This pattern of alignment of farm groups with CropLife America and RISE is in line with how opposition to pesticide restrictions has manifested in other states, where individuals who represent local farmer groups are also being compensated by the pesticide industry.
In Maryland in March, lobbyist Lindsay Thompson submitted comments in opposition to the proposed state law to ban PFAS in pesticides on behalf of the Maryland Grain Producers Association, “the voice of grain farmers growing corn, wheat, barley, and sorghum across the state.”
At the same time, she was being paid to lobby for the Maryland Green Industry Council and the Maryland Association of Green Industries, trade groups for pesticide sellers and users (like nurseries and turf makers) that often work closely with RISE. A few months earlier, she was registered as a lobbyist on behalf of RISE. She is now registered as a lobbyist for CropLife America. Thompson did not respond to a request for comment.
In New York, Rick Zimmerman, who at one time led the New York Farm Bureau, has a client list that includes CropLife America and Syngenta. Before the state passed a law to ban the use of neonicotinoid coatings on some seeds, he submitted comments in opposition to the law on behalf of the Northeast Agribusiness and Feed Alliance, the Northeast Dairy Producers’ Association, and the New York State Vegetable Growers’ Association.
Many lobbyists work for multiple clients in related industries, said Dan Raichel, director of pollinators and pesticides at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), so in some ways the situation is not uncommon. “But there is a tension there,” he said.
In the case of New York, he pointed to the fact that the bill would have restricted the use of chemicals known to be lethal to pollinators so they could not be used on corn, soy, and wheat seeds. Fruit and vegetable growers would have been able to continue spraying the insecticides as needed. Still, Zimmerman opposed the bill on behalf of vegetable growers.
“That always struck me as odd. These are people that rely on pollinators,” Raichel said. “So, here’s a bill that would help with pollinator populations and beneficial insects and soil health. It was not targeted towards the fruit and vegetable industry and would not affect them at all.”
Zimmerman disputed that idea. Many of New York’s vegetable farmers, he said, plant sweet corn, and their ability to use neonicotinoid coatings on those seeds was impacted by the ban. Overall, he added, the farm groups he represents are opposed to state lawmakers regulating specific groups of pesticides because they believe the current registration and review process in place is already science-based and thorough.
“It’s a fundamental question as to whether the state should take the authority to ban a particular pesticide product through legislation,” he said. “Whenever the legislature gets involved in these sorts of decisions, it goes well beyond the science, and it becomes a politically driven campaign to eliminate a particular product.”
“It’s a fundamental question as to whether the state should take the authority to ban a particular pesticide product through legislation. Whenever the legislature gets involved in these sorts of decisions, it goes well beyond the science, and it becomes a politically driven campaign to eliminate a particular product.”
Still, Raichel doesn’t see it as politics; he’s focused on environmental impacts he feels current regulations don’t adequately take into account. And after years of working to support the New York bill, he hadn’t heard a lot from growers on those points. “The people that we were seeing in Albany were the [industry] representatives,” he said. “I’m sure there were farmers involved, but how much of an issue was this, that real farmers actually cared about? It was hard to say.”
Whether or not farmers will show up to oppose restricting PFAS in pesticides is one big question heading into Maine’s 2025 session, Pluecker said.
Lobbying data shows that compared to 2021 and 2022, CropLife America and RISE started to shift spending toward targeting Maine’s executive branch in 2023 and 2024. If the industry successfully organizes more farmers through its network and the new Maine Farmers Coalition, they may have more momentum.
“It’s going to be an interesting conversation in the statehouse, because farmers are going to come forward and they’re going to try to say they’ve been harmed in some way by the existing law, but the existing law hasn’t gone into effect,” says Pluecker. “In fact, it has been pushed back for another two years since it was passed three years ago.”
In the end, Pluecker said, he hears the argument often that there’s no need to regulate PFAS in pesticides because most of the PFAS contamination detected so far came from sludge and that’s been taken care of. But Nordell said farmers and others should look to the situation with sludge as an analogy for how to act now to avoid a similar fate due to other PFAS sources, including pesticides.
“There were strong critiques of the safety of using sewage sludge as a fertilizer back in the ‘80s. There were toxicologists who recognized that it was not a safe practice, and concerns were overridden,” Nordell said. In fact, sludge application was embraced by state and federal regulators. In most states , it still is.
Nordell sees stark parallels to sludge in the 1980s and PFAS in pesticides today—and says that it’s time to learn from past mistakes.
“We need to be asking hard questions and . . . to move as quickly as we can to protect farming communities from further exposure, to protect our farming resources, our farm soils, and our irrigation and drinking water on farms from further contamination.”
The post Why Are Pesticide Companies Fighting State Laws to Address PFAS? appeared first on Civil Eats.
