From pesticide bans to the H-2B program to fertilizer regulations, contractors are facing a slew of legislative issues. That’s why now is a key time to get involved and make your voice heard, said Bob Mann, director of state and local government relations for the National Association of Landscape Professionals.
Get involved with your state associations, national associations, working with others toward the same goal,” he said at LANDSCAPES 2018 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Pesticide regulations.
As a result of a 1993 Supreme Court case, localities can regulate pesticides above and beyond what the federal government does, which makes working across city lines complicated in some areas.
That’s why NALP helped put language into the federal farm bill to prohibit any entity below the state level from regulating pesticide applications.
Mann said the NALP has also started working with organizations outside of the EPA. “What we wanted to do is explain to them what we did for a living,” he said, adding that most organizations don’t know how lawn care operators set up pesticide programs or service properties. “We want to give them some semblance of what we really do,” he said.
Once the elections are over and we get an idea of what the next group of legislators
Mann pointed to a lawsuit in San Francisco in which a jury found that Roundup herbicides contributed to a former school groundskeeper’s cancer diagnosis. “The problem that is not whether or not it’s safe,” he said. “I think the science is very clear on that. It’s that the amount of glyphosate used in agriculture dwarfs the amount used in landscapes.”
The issue, he said, is that the U.S. already has a strong framework to regulate pesticides in this country and a ban on glyphosate would be a “kill shot.”
“We want to keep (that ban) from happening, not because the landscape industry uses a lot of
And that’s only one of many issues right now, Mann said. The situation is much for the same for neonicotinoids. “But they have incredible utility in the marketplace,” he said.
Labor issues.
The fight for a returning worker exemption in the H-2B program is also ongoing. “We are being left behind because we do not have enough bodies,” Mann said.
The NALP is also becoming very concerned about efforts to raise the minimum wage, Mann said, especially considering how hard landscapers are struggling to find workers. “The government artificially messing around with your profit and loss is not a good thing at all,” he said, noting that the organization will be gathering information and following that issue as well.
Get involved.
Because local issues and bans are so hard to follow, Mann urged members to reach out to the NALP if they hear of any issues that could affect the landscape and lawn care industry. The organization will do whatever it can to get local voices into the conversation to advocate for the industry.
“A local voice is much better than somebody coming from, say, my perspective,” Mann said.
Mann told the story of when it all really clicked for him. While in Florida, he attended a meeting where a fertilizer blackout period was passed. As he was driving back after the council meeting, he passed fertilizer truck after fertilizer truck. “These guys weren’t even in the room,” he said. “I wondered if they even knew that half of the year of business was just taken away from them.”
That’s when it dawned on him how important it is for those in the industry to get involved on a local level. “You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you,” Mann said.
Although speaking to legislators may be intimidating, Mann said it’s surprisingly easy to talk to legislators since they want to hear from you. “They put their pants on one leg at a time just like everybody else,” he said.
Mann put out the call to landscapers across the country to keep an ear out for ordinances that are fought out at the local level. “They’re almost invisible to us because they don’t go through the same level of publicity,” Mann says. “Normally we don’t see any notes until a member drops us an email.”