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The New Jersey Green Industry Council (NJGIC) is continuing the scholarship program initiated by the New Jersey Agribusiness Association in memory of Edward A. Platz.  This program promotes the tri-state area’s Agriculture and Green Industry students and assists them with their education.

Edward A. Platz is the founder of Plant Food Company, Inc. (originated under a different name) in 1946.  He was very involved in the Turfgrass and Agriculture Industry, starting the first Liquid Fertilizer Formulation Company in the state.  Mr. Platz passed in 1977.

Eligibility

Applicants to the New Jersey Green Industry Council Scholarship Program must be…

• Enrolled at and in the academic rank of sophomore, junior, or senior at any accredited 4-year college or university in the United States, and enrolled in any two-year or 4-year Green Industry Program when receiving the scholarship
• Possess an academic rank of sophomore, junior, or senior at that time
• Applicant must be majoring in an Agriculture or Green Industry subject area (i.e., Plant Science, Animal Science, Agronomy, Entomology, Ornamental Horticulture, Turf Science, Golf Management, Nursery, etc., or related field)
• New Jersey resident
• Demonstrate an intention of pursuing a career in production, agriculture, or the Green Industry

Awards

The NJGIC will award two (2) $3000 scholarships in memory of Edward A. Platz.  Payment will be made September 22^nd at the NJGIC Annual Golf Classic at Forsgate Country Club.  Attendance is not a considering factor in determining the scholarship awardees.

Procedures and Deadlines

Applicants must submit the following…

• Completed application
• Official copy of transcripts from all colleges attended
• Two (2) letters of recommendation with at least one academic letter. Letters of recommendation are to be sent directly to the Executive Director of NJGIC.
• A 1-2-page typed essay stating current education and career goals
• A one-paragraph answer to the following question…

What has been your most important extra-curricular or community activity, your most important contribution to it, and what has your participation in it meant to you as an individual?

• All information must be postmarked no later than Monday, August 1, 2022.

Applications

Initial Application, Please

Detailed Recipient Info, Please

Selection of Recipients

Scholarship recipients are selected on the basis of academic record, potential to succeed, leadership and participation in school, community, and personal activities, honors, statement of education and career goals, and an outside appraisal.

Final selection of recipients is made by the NJGIC Board of Directors.  All applicants will be notified of the selection by August 15, 2022.

Revisions

NJGIC Board of Directors reserves the right to review the conditions and procedures of the Scholarship Program and make appropriate changes at any time.

Additional Information

Questions regarding the NJGIC Scholarship Program as well as all applications and letters of recommendation should be addressed to:

Lori Jenssen
(c) (908) 310-9722
Email: njgic.director@gmail.com
NJGIC︱P.O. Box 341︱Califon, NJ 07830

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The post Neonic Alert appeared first on NJGIC.

Annually, the NJDEP releases the list in a form of a spreadsheet showing that year’s registered bee yards with the beekeeper’s contact information. This list can be cumbersome to sort through and many times there are addresses that are not correct or contact information that is not valid.

In order to make the process of finding local bee yards easier for our members, the NJGIC has added a map to our website showing all the registered yards in NJ. Users can enter the address of a planned application and see what bee yards are in the area. By clicking on the mapped bee yards you can view the name and contact info of the registered beekeeper.

Please note that while this mapping feature will make finding your local bee yards easier, it will not take the place of checking the official NJDEP spreadsheet and confirming the yards in your area. It is our hope that applicators will find this helpful as a tool to aid in meeting the requirements of the regulation and further add value to NJGIC membership.

The full regulation can be read here. 

NJGIC notes on the regulation can be read here.

The current list of registered bee yards can be found here.

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A bill is set to be put up for a vote in the State Assembly that will restrict neonicotinoid insecticide use to solely agricultural areas. Senate Bill 1016 and its pair, Assembly Bill 2070, will take a valuable tool away from professional licensed applicators working as landscape contractors, golf course superintendents, arborists, and anyone else who properly applies a neonicotinoid in New Jersey.

Current active ingredients on the market that would be restricted under this bill include: acetamiprid (Tristar), clothianidin (Arena, Aloft), dinotefuran (Safari, Zylam), imidacloprid (Merit, Avatar PLX, Triple Crown), and thiamethoxam (Meridian). None of these products will be available for sale in New Jersey if this bill passes.

National anti-pesticide groups are aiming to make New Jersey have the most restrictive neonic laws in the country, basing decisions on partial truths and activity in other parts of the world. They have promised legislators that the continued use of these products, even by professional applicators, will have detrimental effects on pollinators and the environment. The safe and responsible applicators in the State of New Jersey should not be the ones to pay for the agenda of these national groups.

The NJGIC is opposed to taking these tools away from professional licensed applicators who are properly trained and currently using these products in a safe, responsible manner, following an IPM plan and the product label. We do not agree that continued use of these products is going to have adverse effects on the environment or wildlife in New Jersey and to make such assumptions is an overreach of what is scientifically accepted. It is our goal to let the neonic class of insecticides be classified as restricted use and allow Certified Pesticide Applicators in New Jersey the ability to continue to use these products where needed.

Our lobbying firm, State Street Associates (SSA), has been working diligently, providing information to the main bill sponsor, Senator Bob Smith, who is a key player in having the bill amended. Members of NJGIC and SSA have testified before multiple committees to make our case in Trenton and Dr. Cristi Palmer from Rutgers represented our interests in a small science-based meeting with the Senator. While we are optimistic that a compromise can be reached with the Senator and we will see a version of the bill that we can work with, it is time to make alternative plans so we will be able to react quickly if things don’t move forward as we hope.

If our talks with the Senator stall, we are going to need you: our members, allied associations, and affected parties in the State to reach out to your local Assembly representative and tell them the effect this bill would have on your business. Licensed applicators in New Jersey are trained professionals and are not over-applying or misusing products to the detriment of the environment. Through the continued use of IPM plans and best management practices, these products can continue to be safely used throughout the State.

This is a very fluid situation and we will keep all parties up to date as we move forward. If the time comes when further action is needed we will continue to support the industry, supplying the names and contact information of key representatives who you can reach out to as well as email form letters that can be quickly filled out and sent to your local representative. Together we make sure the voice of the Green Industry in New Jersey is heard.

Thank you for your support and please do not hesitate to reach out to NJGIC with any questions. If you are not currently supporting the NJGIC, please consider doing so by becoming a member or making a donation at www.NJGIC.org. Issues in New Jersey continue to keep us busy and strain our resources. Your support makes a difference to ensure our continued representation in Trenton advocating on behalf of New Jersey’s Green Industries.

Keith Bennett, CGCS
President, NJGIC

Resources:
Senate Bill S-1016
Assembly Bill A-2070
Further information can be found at www.njgic.org

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Can anyone make sense of the debate over glyphosate, the active molecule in the most widely used herbicide in the world? According to a study by University of California–San Diego researchers published last year, urine samples from a group of 100 southern California residents showed that levels of glyphosate and its metabolite, aminomethylphosphonic acid have increased fifteenfold between 1993 and 2016.

Unsurprisingly, the publication of this research added considerable fuel to the regulatory fire sweeping Brussels and Washington alike over the use of the chemical, even though the study is limited in scope and has no bearing on the weed killer’s health effects. On Nov. 27, the European Commission agreed to renew the molecule’s market reauthorization for five years, after serious opposition from member states. EU members still retain the right to ban the chemical domestically if they so wish. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers from the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology have opened an investigation into the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an arm of the World Health Organization that receives U.S. funding, because the agency stands accused of editing its findings to support a 2015 decision that glyphosate is probably carcinogenic.

Several things are going on here that are worth untangling. At the heart of the problem is the messy fact that when scientists and policymakers carelessly substitute risk for hazard, flawed conclusions are drawn.

We are generally bad at understanding risk. Determining the carcinogenicity of any foreign bodies that ends up in our ecosystems involves assessing degrees of uncertainty. Unlike with pharmaceutical trials, it is impossible to carry out a randomized clinical trial with glyphosate or any other weed killer.

It goes without saying that weed killers should be toxic to their intended target and benign to humans. Animal studies can be a tool for gauging a biocide’s carcinogenic potential, but they can only provide hazard signals, as multiple studies have shown that simply extrapolating research conducted on rodents to humans rarely produces accurate results. Animal testing therefore has limited value in determining carcinogenicity, because it does not necessarily allow researchers to draw conclusions of causation between a given substance and the occurrence of cancer in test animals, let alone in humans.

Differentiating between absolute risk in the lab and true risk for human health is essential.

This is an important factor to consider with regards to the glyphosate debate. When IARC announced in June 2015 that glyphosate was “probably carcinogenic” to humans, Kate Guyton, a toxicologist and lead author of the IARC monograph, stated that “because the evidence in laboratory animals was sufficient and the evidence in humans was limited, this places [glyphosate] in Group 2A [of probable carcinogens].” It was later revealed that IARC scientists had removed findings from studies that concluded glyphosate to be noncarcinogenic before publishing the final version. The edits were made in the monograph’s chapter on animal studies, which crucially informed IARC’s assessment that glyphosate causes cancer.

The debate sparked by IARC’s evaluation highlights why human studies are so essential. Indeed, one key study—whose initial findings were not included in IARC’s literature review due to their internal prohibition on considering unpublished data—is the Agricultural Health Study, a long-term observational analysis of the health effects of herbicides on 89,000 farmers and their families in Iowa and North Carolina. Running since 1993, the AHS has consistently failed to find that glyphosate use is linked with increased risk of cancer. Parts of the study, whose failure to find any evidence of glyphosate’s carcinogenicity was already well-known among IARC staff, were finally published earlier in November.

These findings have been backed up by other studies as well.
Last year, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Health Organization presented a joint review report on pesticide residue in indirectly exposed persons, including farming and production workers’ families, as well as consumers. The report did not find any evidence of increased risk of cancer from glyphosate exposure. Instead, after having examined the epidemiological evidence of occupational exposures, the report concluded, “Glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans by food intake.”

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I’m connecting again with an important update on the litigation concerning our glyphosate-based products, and with some important resources to ensure you are able to share the most up-to-date information.

Update on Ongoing Trial

A California jury has ruled against Bayer and in favor of the plaintiffs, Alva and Alberta Pilliod, in the latest glyphosate trial. The jury of citizens determined that Monsanto is liable for the plaintiffs’ non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer and has awarded the plaintiff damages.

We are disappointed with the jury decision and will appeal the verdict, which is in stark contrast to the conclusion of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which re-stated recently its classification of glyphosate as “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” the agency’s most favorable classification. The EPA conclusion is consistent with the determinations of leading global health regulators over more than 40 years.

Bayer will challenge the verdict and damages on appeal. It is important in product liability litigation like this to assess these cases over the long term, as there will be a number of trials and verdicts, as well as appeals to be decided before verdicts become final. This process will take some years before we reach a clear outcome for the litigation, which we are confident will be driven by the extensive body of science that supports the safety of these products.

What You Can Do: Resources

In light of the jury’s decision and an expected increase in media attention, we wanted to provide some resources to help ensure that the conversation surrounding the trial is based on sound science:

• Bayer’s statement
• Bayer.com/glyphosate
• GlyphosateLitigationFacts.com

These resources speak to the safety and/or importance of Roundup, and we encourage you to use them in whatever ways are most useful to you and your stakeholders.

As ever, we appreciate your time and energy. Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback.

Kimberly OBrien
Director, Government Affairs
Bayer U.S. LLC – Crop Science
Tel:          +1 617.608.7288
E-mail:     kimberly.obrien@bayer.com
Web:       http://www.bayer.com

The post Bayer Responds to Recent Glyphosate Judgement appeared first on NJGIC.

Mike Caprio, Regional business consultant, Lawn Doctor, Holmdel, N.J.

The post Five Questions: Mike Caprio appeared first on NJGIC.

Employers that want to hire seasonal guest workers with H-2B visas will now have to go through at least two separate lotteries to employ them.

Beginning July 3, the Department of Labor (DOL) will change its procedures for processing H-2B applications for labor certi¹cation. Visa applications will be randomly ordered for processing based on the date of filing and the start date of work requested. Employers with certified petitions will then likely enter another lottery held by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). Labor certi¹cation ensures that employers are not displacing or negatively impacting the wages and working conditions of U.S. workers and must be obtained before employers can petition USCIS for visa approval.

The DOL’s labor certification processing is currently conducted on a first come, first served basis—timed down to the millisecond—and coupled with the limited number of visas available, that process created an incentive for employers to file their applications as early as possible. But that experiment, begun in 2018, led to the DOL’s O¾ce of Foreign Labor Certi¹cation’s electronic filing system crashing Jan. 1 due to “unprecedented demand.”

The DOL attempted the process “to promote fairness in response to the unprecedented volume of applications” the agency received. It decided that sequentially assigning H-2B applications to analysts based on the calendar date and time on which the applications were received, measured to the millisecond, better re¼ected the order in which applications were filed.

On Jan. 1, the agency received 5,276 applications for more than 96,400 workers, nearly three times the 33,000 visas available for the spring and summer seasons. Five minutes after filing had opened, there were nearly 23,000 login attempts—30 times the number of users the previous year.

“Because of the intense competition for H-2B visas in recent years, the department’s technology and available sta· resources have been challenged to handle the increasingly large volume of H-2B applications ¹led on Jan. 1 of each year,” the DOL said.

Starting with the next ¹ling period July 3, the DOL will randomly select for processing those applications that have a worker start date on the earliest possible date for the season—either Oct. 1 or April 1—and were received during the firrst three calendar days of the ¹ling period. After the first three days, applications will be chosen at random for processing each day.

[Visit SHRM’s resource page on workplace immigration (www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/Pages/workplace-immigration.aspx).]

From Lottery to Lottery

USCIS has begun to hold a lottery of its own because of the extent to which demand for visas for seasonal workers has outpaced supply in recent years.

The agency announced Feb. 22 that it had conducted a lottery for the 33,000 H-2B visa petitions for the second half of fiscal year (FY) 2019. The agency first held a visa lottery last year.
What Will DHS Do?

To address chronic labor shortages, Congress in February gave the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) the authority to more than double the number of H-2B visas available through the end of FY 2019. The number of visas could increase from 66,000 to 135,000.

DHS authorized an additional 15,000 visas when granted the authority the last two years. Yet another lottery was held for those visas, and employers had to prove they would face severe economic harm without the access to foreign labor.

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