LITTLE ROCK — The State Plant Board voted unanimously Monday to extend for a second year the requirement that all rice seed planted in Arkansas be tested for traces of genetically engineered varieties.
Also, the board scheduled a public hearing to consider setting the 2008 boll weevil eradication fee at $14 per acre in the Northeast Delta Zone and voted to increase Arkansas' pesticide registration fees by $100 over a two-year period beginning in 2008.
All seed used for planting in 2008 must be tested before April 1 for traces of Bayer CropScience's experimental LibertyLink rice. Any seed that fails the test must either be destroyed or identified as containing transgenic characteristics and then sold as grain.
The regulations also ban the planting of two long-grainrice varieties - Cheniere and Clearfield 131 - that are linked to lots containing transgenic material.
"We support the efforts of the U.S. rice industry along with the State Plant Board to eliminate the presence of LibertyLink traits and to reestablish the supply and marketability of U.S. rice," the Arkansas Farm Bureau wrote in support of the measure.
"The quick actions by the rice industry and by the Arkansas State Plant Board in 2007 showed our customers worldwide a good-faith effort to rid the U.S. rice supply of the unapproved LibertyLink traits and were necessary actions to bring U.S. rice back into the global marketplace.
"We support the continuation of the regulations in 2008 in order to regain market access lost because of the LibertyLink event."
Stuttgart rice farmer Ray Vester, who spoke on behalf of the USA Rice Federation, echoed those sentiments as did Keith Glover, president of Producers Rice Mill Inc., a Stuttgart-based cooperative owned by 2,700 farmer-members.
The plant board also voted unanimously Monday in favor of a boll weevil committee recommendation to set the 2008 eradication fee for the Northeast Delta Zone at $14 per acre. The recommendation will be the subject of a public hearing on Dec. 18 before returning to the board for a final vote.
The $14 per acre assessment would represent no change since 2004 in the Northeast Delta Zone, which includes all of Mississippi County and Craighead County east of the St. Francis River.
Unlike Arkansas' four other boll weevil eradication zones, farmers in the Northeast Deltanever approved eradication through a referendum so their program is administered by the plant board.
The comparable 2007 fees for the four other eradication zones, which began the program earlier and are further along in eradication, are: Southwest, $10 per acre; Southeast, $12 per acre; Central, $12 per acre; and Northeast Ridge, $8 per acre. These fees for 2008 will be reviewed on Nov. 19 during a meeting of the Arkansas Cotton Growers Organization Inc.
According to projections by the Arkansas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation, which operates the eradication program in all five zones, the program should repay the last of its debt in 2013. Currently, the foundation has about $27.7 million in indebtedness.
In one final unanimous vote, the plant board approved an increase of Arkansas' annual pesticide registration fees by $100over a two-year period. The fee increase - to $200 in 2008 and $250 in 2009 and thereafter - will apply to approximately 11,000 products.
Pesticide registration fees are used to fund the plant board's pesticide division, whose inspectors had to respond to a record number of herbicide drift complaints in 2006 regarding glyphosate and 2,4-D.
The pesticide registration fee increase, the first since 1994, was supported by the Southern Crop Production Association, which represents 95 percent of pesticide formulators, said Mike Thompson, who manages the plant board's pesticide division.
Business, Pages 21, 22 on 10/30/2007