Title: Is Temik coming back? | Farm Progress
Headings: Is Temik coming back?
Is Temik coming back?
Additional label changes
Searching for replacements

Content: A turnaround by the EPA on their long-standing aldicarb vendetta may prove to be a classic question of being a blessing or a curse. Once Bayer announced plans to phase out Temik, it seems the whole agriculture chemical industry began ramping up old and new technology for a replacement. Getting a new product through development and Federal clearance is a multi-million dollar process. Companies weren’t quick to make that investment to replace a product that had proved effective and relatively inexpensive over such a long period of time. Searching for replacements
Now that Temik is in reality gone, companies are looking at chemistries that had been discarded, because the cost of developing them was too high and the expectations of profit too low as long as Temik was available. If the EPA now grants a label for a product that will be essentially the same as Temik, those research and development dollars are likely to go away just as quickly as they materialized. Likewise cotton and peanut growers in the Southeast have had to find new products and new uses of these products to replace Temik. In some cases, the loss of Temik has forced growers to be more timely in pesticide applications and to choose more wisely which varieties to plant and where to plant them. Despite the need to reduce over-dependence on one product, the vast majority of growers want Temik, or something like it, back. For example, Virginia farmers are already seeing higher levels of tomato spotted wilt virus than has been seen in recent years.