Your advocacy and sustainability team is pleased to report on a recent and “quick” advocacy win that has helped to preserve a vital project at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) that provides valuable data researchers use to monitor national pesticide use, water quality and pollution.
In 2023, NCG signed on to join 122 farmworker, environmental justice, public health, conservation and science-based organizations (including NCG partners Alianza Nacional de Campesinas and Agricultural Justice Project) to petition U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland and USGS Director David Applegate to preserve the federal Pesticide Use Mapping Project. The project provides data that serves many scientists, state and local public health officials and environmental advocates and is not available anywhere else.
The project was endangered as a result of directives issued by the previous administration that restructured the USGS and devalued important data resources like this. Originally tracking data for around 540 agricultural pesticides, project cuts dwindled the number to just 70 by 2019 — and rather than issuing data annually, updates were to be issued once every five years.
In March 2024, we learned that our coalition’s petition was successful — USGS reversed cuts to the project and pledged to restore tracking for a full suite of 400 pesticides by 2025 with annual updates. This is a big win for those who care about pesticide reduction; data about pesticide use and its effects on streams and groundwater is critical to making the case to better regulate, reduce or even eliminate pesticide use in agriculture. This was a “quick” win in the advocacy world — many times policy changes take years or even decades.
This work aligns with NCG’s member-driven advocacy priorities related to racial equity, with respect to environmental racism and environmental responsibility, specifically advocating for federal policies that strengthen environmental regulations to reduce and remediate persistent environmental contaminants in our food supply.
