Texas Citrus Growers Tell EPA the Neonicotinoids Are the Difference Between Orchards and Subdivisions

Five insecticides are on the table at the Environmental Protection Agency, and Texas citrus growers have spent the past six weeks arguing in writing that losing them would end the industry in the Lower Rio Grande Valley rather than merely inconvenience it.

The five are acetamiprid, clothianidin, dinotefuran, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam — the neonicotinoids named in a 2020 petition from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which asked the agency to revoke all food residue tolerances for the class. Tolerances are the legal ceilings that let trace residues of a pesticide remain on harvested food; pull them and the products cannot be used on a crop that will be eaten, regardless of how well they work in the field. EPA has said it will complete its review and take action on the request by April 20, 2027, a date now close enough that the comment record has filled with grower testimony, reported Wednesday by Citrus Industry Magazine.

Mark Fryer, who farms near Edinburgh in the Valley, did not hedge in comments dated Aug. 31. "If we lose the neonicotinoids, I might as well push out my orchards and develop subdivisions like everyone else because I won't have the tools to grow a citrus crop," he wrote. Fryer said he uses acetamiprid, imidacloprid and thiamethoxam against Asian citrus psyllid, citrus leafminer, mealybugs and California red scale, and he preemptively answered the pollinator objection that usually follows neonicotinoids into a regulatory docket: bees are in his orchard only during the spring bloom, and he applies nothing insecticidal while they are.

TJ Flowers of Lone Star Citrus Growers in Mission filed the same argument on Sept. 16, describing the products as selective enough to spare beneficial insects and short on re-entry and pre-harvest intervals. Without them, he wrote, many grower-partners would have little choice but to abandon citrus and convert land to housing, "as has already happened elsewhere in the Valley."

The psyllid is the reason the stakes read so high. The insect is the vector for huanglongbing, citrus greening disease, which was detected in the Valley more than a decade ago and has no cure once a tree is infected. There is no spray that saves a sick tree; there is only the management of the insect that spreads the bacterium from one block to the next.

Dale Murden, president and CEO of Texas Citrus Mutual, filed comments Sept. 9 on behalf of the state's growers and leaned on the agency's own record. In its 2017 neonicotinoid assessments, EPA found the class critical for Asian citrus psyllid management, he noted. Murden's argument was procedural as much as agronomic: growers are not asking EPA to keep a tolerance the agency decides fails the statutory safety standard, only that those decisions be made individually and on a complete scientific record, instead of as a classwide result produced by a litigation calendar.

That distinction is where the comment period will likely matter most. The NRDC petition treats the five chemistries as a class with shared pollinator concerns, while the Valley's growers describe three of them as their working tools and none as interchangeable. Whether EPA resolves the request chemical by chemical or with one broad stroke shapes what Valley citrus looks like after April 2027 — and whether the acres that have been selling to developers keep selling.