Good news: EPA creates bureaucratic nightmare to prevent farmers from using... pesticides

And what could possibly go wrong with a de facto ban on pesticides? Farm Futures explains:

The U.S. Senate and the Senate Agriculture Committee failed to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from issuing a regulation which will require a Clean Water Act National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit when applying pesticides.

...any person discharging pesticides and leaving a residue, waste or surplusage through a point source and into a water of the United States will be required to obtain a NPDES permit before application. This case still poses a legal risk for tillage agriculture...

• mosquito and other flying insect pest control;
• weed and algae pest control on the water and the water's edge;
• animal pest control...;
• forest canopy pest control where pesticides will necessarily have to be applied over and deposited into water.

The general permit issued by EPA will start being enforced at the end of February, 2012... As producers, you need to be extremely vigilant as to what your state environmental agency may be doing with regard to requiring NPDES permits for spraying of pesticides.

In other words, if a farm has any water on its property, it could be required to submit a "pesticide discharge management plan". This fun package of regulatory overreach includes:

• a Pesticide Discharge Management Team;
• Problem Identification;
• Pest Management Options Evaluation;
• Response Procedures;
• Spill Response Procedures;
• Adverse Incident Procedures;
• and Documentation to Support Compliance with Other Federal Laws.

As the understated Farm Futures observes, "it is unlikely most agricultural operations could support this bureaucratic framework."

[The framework] does not provide any protection or preemption if a producer is sued by a citizen who claims the spraying of a crop leads to the discharge of the pesticide or herbicide into the air and is discharged or deposited into a water of the state.

...Before spring planting begins, you should have your local farm organization check with the state environmental agency to determine its position on pesticide application and any potential legal liability that might develop as a result of spraying practices... It still poses a risk to farmers and applicators.

I guess we really didn't need reliable food production after all.

And what's the real motivation behind this regulatory nightmare? To make farming so difficult, so onerous, so bureaucratic, that small farms will simply give up and sell out to huge corporations; you know, the kind that have an incestuous relationship with Congress. With the state. It's Crony Capitalism 101, folks (refer to tenets #1 and #7 in Compare and Contrast: Karl Marx' 10 Point Program of Communism and the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Agenda).