In February 2024, the European Commission withdrew its Sustainable Use Regulation after Parliament rejected it in November 2023. This marked a stunning reversal of the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy targeting 50% pesticide reduction by 2030. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA banned the DCPA (dacthal) after nearly 40 years on the market. The agency continues restricting dicamba despite two federal courts vacating its registrations. The regulatory landscape for crop protection is undergoing unprecedented transformation. Agricultural operations are caught in the crossfire.
The data reveals a global shift in sustainable pesticide regulation. This shift is accelerating faster than agricultural systems can adapt. Under the European Green Deal, the commission made significant commitments. Specifically, the Farm to Fork strategy and biodiversity strategy both targeted change. The Commission committed to reducing pesticide use and risk by 50% by 2030 (European Parliament Fact Sheet 2025).
In the United States, the EPA took unprecedented action. The agency announced a rare emergency ban on DCPA or Dachtal. This marked the first such emergency pesticide ban since DDT in 1972. Additionally, the EPA continues evaluating dicamba restrictions. This continues despite massive industry and farmer pushback.
This isn’t gradual regulatory evolution. Rather, it’s rapid, politically charged transformation. This transformation creates uncertainty for operations trying to maintain productivity while navigating compliance requirements that shift with each growing season.
The Global Regulatory Landscape: A Tale of Two Approaches
The European Union: Ambitious Goals Meet Political Reality
The EU’s approach to sustainable pesticide regulation represents the most ambitious attempt to fundamentally reshape agricultural chemical use. On 22 June 2022, the Commission tabled a proposal for a regulation on the sustainable use of pesticides. The proposal would repeal and replace Directive 2009/128/EC. It sets legally binding EU targets to reduce the use and risk of chemical pesticides. It also seeks to reduce the use of the more hazardous ones—by 50% by 2030 (Halleux 2024).
The proposal included provisions to ban the use of all pesticides in sensitive areas (and within three meters of those areas). Member States could set binding national reduction targets within defined limits, considering their own circumstances.
What happened next reveals the political complexity of sustainable pesticide regulation:
The file was referred to the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI). Parliament rejected the text in November 2023. In February 2024, the Commission withdrew its proposal in view of Parliament’s rejection and lack of progress in Council discussions (Halleux 2024).
“This top-down proposal stemming from the ‘Farm 2 Fork’ logic was poorly designed,” COPA-COGECA stated. The leading farmers lobby in Brussels continued: It was “poorly evaluated, poorly financed, and offered little alternatives to farmers.” This statement came in response to the withdrawal (Liboreiro & Fortuna 2024).
The legislative death of the Sustainable Use Regulation closes the book on Farm 2 Fork. This was a multi-part strategy unveiled in May 2020. The strategy set the goal of making Europe’s food systems healthier and more sustainable (Liboreiro & Fortuna 2024). Under pressure from conservatives and lobbyists, the strategy was gradually watered down and stripped to the bare minimum.
However, the regulatory pressure hasn’t disappeared—it’s evolving.
Although the Farm to Fork Strategy originally set ambitious targets for reducing pesticide use and risk, the Strategic Dialogue may bring a more flexible approach. However, the core principles of promoting sustainable agriculture and integrated pest management (IPM) remain central (Lane 2025). Financial incentives through Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) eco-schemes and agri-environment-climate measures continue to support the adoption of IPM.
The United States: Targeted Bans and Endangered Species Protection
U.S. sustainable pesticide regulation is taking a different path—less centralized target-setting, more product-specific restrictions, and increasing focus on endangered species protection and farmworker safety.
The DCPA Emergency Ban:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pulled a pesticide commonly used on broccoli and onions from the market due to health risks to unborn babies, a rare move from the agency not seen for nearly 40 years (Zimmerman 2024). The ban encompasses all registrations of the herbicide dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, also known as DCPA or Dachtal.
Exposure to Dacthal can cause changes to fetal thyroid hormone levels, leading to low birth weight in addition to impaired brain and motor skill development. EPA found that some pregnant individuals handling DCPA products could be subjected to exposures up to 20 times greater than what the agency has estimated is safe for unborn babies (Federal Register Emergency Order 2024).
“DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately,” Michal Freedhoff, EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, stated. “In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems” (EPA Emergency Order 2024).
The Dicamba Saga:
Dicamba’s regulatory history exemplifies the complexity of sustainable pesticide regulation when economic interests, environmental concerns, and legal challenges collide. A number of commonly used crop protection products were pulled from the market in 2024, including dicamba, a controversial herbicide that is vulnerable to drifting and destroying plants outside of farm boundaries (Zimmerman 2024).
In February 2024 a federal court vacated the EPA’s 2020 re-approval of dicamba. The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders who were deprived of their opportunity to comment (Center for Biological Diversity Press Release 2024). These included growers who do not use over-the-top dicamba and have suffered significant financial losses and states that repeatedly reported landscape-level damage.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that up to 15 million acres of soybeans have been damaged by dicamba drift. Dicamba drift has damaged millions of acres, including croplands, home gardens, forests and even wildlife refuges (Center for Biological Diversity Press Release 2024).
Endangered Species Protection:
Outside of restrictions on individual pesticides, the EPA also took steps to reassess how it approves crop protection products in the future. The agency finalized a plan to safeguard endangered species from pesticides and proposed reviving an Obama-era rule to protect farmworkers from these chemicals (Zimmerman 2024).
The registration of glufosinate-P marks the first herbicide to be reviewed under the agency’s strategy to protect endangered species, which has received considerable pushback from growers. Farmers may experience the impact of these new regulations beyond 2024, as the EPA is expected to use new strategies to reapprove pesticides and likely impose additional restrictions on how some products can be used.
The Drivers of Regulatory Change
Public Health and Environmental Concerns
Chemical pesticides employed to maintain crop yields are considered a major source of pollution and have been linked to biodiversity loss, poor-quality water, degraded soils, pest resistance and chronic illnesses (Liboreiro & Fortuna 2024). This scientific consensus is driving regulatory pressure even when specific proposals face political opposition.
The spread of plant diseases and pests is on the rise due to a changing climate (FAO 2021). Every year up to 40 percent of food crops is lost to plant pests and diseases—losses that have devastating effects on the poorest communities who base their livelihoods on agriculture. This creates tension between immediate pest control needs and long-term sustainability goals in sustainable pesticide regulation.
Political and Economic Pressures
The divide centers on the dual threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. The EU’s Farm to Fork strategy aims to reduce chemical dependency, optimizing usage while minimizing environmental damage. However, farmers are concerned about the potential for additional regulatory burdens and financial pressures (Pasture.io 2024).
European farmers feel that such mandates overlook their economic challenges, faced with low crop prices, high operational costs, and intense global competition. In March 2024, protests occurred in France and Spain, where farmers blocked borders and disrupted transport routes to push back against the EU’s climate-related regulations (Polzin 2025).
Judicial Influence
The judicial system is increasingly shaping sustainable pesticide regulation. Two different federal courts vacated dicamba registrations—once in 2020 and again in February 2024—as a result of lawsuits filed by the Center for Food Safety, the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Family Farm Coalition, and the Pesticide Action Network (EPA 2025).
Courts are finding that EPA assessments inadequately address stakeholder concerns and fail to properly evaluate environmental harms. This judicial oversight is forcing more rigorous regulatory reviews even when political pressure favors pesticide approval.
The Compliance Challenge: What Operations Face
Uncertainty and Planning Disruption
The rapid pace of regulatory change creates unprecedented planning challenges. Products approved for use one season may be banned next. Long-term crop protection strategies built around specific chemistries become obsolete when key tools are removed from the market.
The EU withdrawal of its pesticide reduction proposal doesn’t eliminate regulatory pressure—it creates uncertainty about what framework will replace it. Operations don’t know whether to prepare for ambitious reduction targets or more flexible approaches.
Economic Impacts
Herbicide bans and new application restrictions aimed at protecting farmworkers and the environment have made it more difficult for farmers to manage crops (Zimmerman 2024). While prices of feed, fertilizer and pesticides are expected to decline, farmers are forecast to spend more on labor and taxes.
DCPA has low benefits in dry bulb onion and shallots where growers can replace DCPA with other alternatives (Federal Register Emergency Order 2024). However, though growers of Brassica and Allium crops may be substantially impacted, these crops are internationally traded, and the global price is unlikely to increase. If the global price does not increase, growers will be unable to pass cost increases on to the consumer.
Technical Complexity
Notable differences exist between the US and EU frameworks regarding standardized pesticide risk indicators. Tools such as the Pesticide Risk Tool (PRT) have been developed to assess the environmental and human health risks of pesticides in the U.S. (Lane 2025). However, the PRT and other models are not mandated, and no national-level pesticide risk reduction targets exist in the United States. IPM adoption remains voluntary, with a decentralized reporting structure that complicates comprehensive pesticide risk assessment across the country.
This creates complexity for operations working across multiple jurisdictions, each with different sustainable pesticide regulation frameworks, reporting requirements, and compliance mechanisms.
Navigating Sustainable Pesticide Regulation: Strategic Approaches
Building Adaptive Compliance Systems
The regulatory landscape will continue evolving. Successful operations are building compliance systems capable of rapid adaptation rather than optimizing current regulations that may change.
Key components include:
Regulatory Monitoring: Systematic tracking of proposed regulations, public comment periods, judicial decisions, and political developments affecting sustainable pesticide regulation
Scenario Planning: Developing crop protection strategies for multiple regulatory futures rather than assuming current frameworks will persist
Flexible Chemistries: Reducing dependence on any single mode of action or product that could face restriction
Documentation Systems: Comprehensive recordkeeping demonstrating compliance, supporting regulatory submissions, and providing evidence for judicial or administrative reviews
Integrated Pest Management as Regulatory Insurance
While the EPA oversees federal pesticide regulation under FIFRA, enforcement of IPM-related programs and pesticide use compliance often falls to individual states (Lane 2025).
Regardless of specific regulatory frameworks, integrated approaches combining biological, cultural, mechanical, and strategic chemical controls position operations better for any regulatory future. Operations with demonstrated IPM implementation face less disruption when specific chemical tools are restricted.
The EU and US frameworks for IPM implementation and pesticide regulation reveal distinct approaches to balancing regulatory oversight with agricultural flexibility. Financial incentives through Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) eco-schemes and agri-environment-climate measures continue to support the adoption of IPM in Europe, while U.S. adoption remains more voluntary and decentralized.
Stakeholder Engagement
The dicamba case demonstrates the importance of stakeholder participation in regulatory processes. Courts found EPA failed to adequately consider input from growers damaged by drift and states reporting widespread problems. Operations affected by proposed regulations should engage actively in public comment periods, providing data and perspectives that regulators must consider.
Alternative Chemistries and Technologies
To increase the availability and use of alternative solutions, regulatory frameworks are requiring the setting of additional EU-wide 2030 targets for increasing overall sales of low-risk plant protection products and biological control (Halleux 2024). This creates market opportunities for operations investing in alternative approaches ahead of mandates.
Early adoption of low-risk biological controls, precision application technologies, and non-chemical management tactics provides competitive advantages when regulations restrict conventional options.
The Economics of Compliance
Short-Term Costs vs. Long-Term Positioning
Transitioning to more sustainable approaches compliant with evolving regulations requires investment. However, the alternative—continuing to optimize systems around chemicals facing increasing restriction—creates escalating risk exposure.
Operations that invested in IPM systems, alternative chemistries, and precision technologies before regulatory mandates gained first-mover advantages when restrictions arrived. Those waiting for regulatory certainty before adapting face compressed transition timelines and limited alternatives.
Market Access and Premium Positioning
Major food companies and retailers are implementing their own sustainable pesticide regulation requirements beyond legal mandates. Operations demonstrating reduced chemical use, endangered species protection, and comprehensive IPM access premium markets and long-term supply contracts.
Regulatory compliance becomes competitive advantage rather than just cost when it enables access to sustainability-driven supply chains paying premium prices.
What This Means for Agricultural Stakeholders
For Farm Managers and Agronomists
The operational imperative is clear: build crop protection programs assuming continued regulatory tightening regardless of specific proposal outcomes. The EU withdrawal of its pesticide reduction regulation doesn’t signal regulatory relaxation; it signals political complexity that creates uncertainty requiring adaptive management.
Preparation requires:
- Diversifying control tactics beyond chemical dependency
- Building knowledge about IPM and alternative approaches
- Investing in precision technologies enabling strategic chemical use
- Developing documentation systems demonstrating sustainability
- Engaging in regulatory processes affecting operations
For Agricultural Input Suppliers
The regulatory environment is creating market transformation. Companies positioned as compliance partners rather than just chemical suppliers gain competitive advantages as operations seek solutions navigating regulatory complexity.
Progressive suppliers are:
- Developing low-risk alternative chemistries before mandates
- Providing IPM technical support and decision tools
- Creating compliance documentation systems for customers
- Investing in biological controls and precision technologies
- Engaging proactively with regulators on workable frameworks
For Policy Makers and Researchers
The EU experience demonstrates that ambitious sustainable pesticide regulation without adequate farmer support, economic assessment, and alternative availability faces political backlash undermining long-term goals.
Effective regulation requires:
- Realistic transition timelines allowing operational adaptation
- Economic support for farmers adopting sustainable practices
- Investment in alternative technology development and validation
- Stakeholder engagement throughout regulatory development
- Monitoring systems tracking actual environmental and health outcomes
The Path Forward: Finding Balance
The tension between environmental protection and agricultural viability isn’t disappearing. Sustainable pesticide regulation will continue evolving, driven by scientific evidence of environmental and health impacts, political pressures from multiple constituencies, judicial oversight ensuring regulatory rigor, and market demands for sustainable production.
The operations thriving in this environment won’t be those hoping for regulatory stability or reversal. They’ll be those building adaptive systems capable of maintaining productivity under evolving compliance requirements, systems that treat sustainability not as regulatory burden but as competitive positioning for long-term viability.
The regulatory landscape for crop protection has fundamentally shifted. The question isn’t whether to adapt to sustainable pesticide regulation, it’s how quickly operations can transform practices to match this new reality while maintaining agricultural productivity.
What regulatory challenges is your operation facing? What compliance strategies are proving effective? Share your experiences in the comments below.