More than a hundred specialty crops producers and their organizations have signed on to an effort to convince Congress not to change the IR-4 program. Since 1963, the IR-4 Project has mustered the financial and scientific resources to register crop protection chemicals for specialty crops—the so-called minor uses. Richard Bonanno, a Massachusetts vegetable grower who is also president of the Massachusetts Farm Bureau, an extension weed management specialist at the University of Massachusetts, and chair of the IR-4 program’s Commodity Liaison Committee, is leading the effort. The decision to lobby Congress came after the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the […]