To begin 2025 on the right foot, we are turning our stakeholder spotlight to the Pesticide Stewardship Alliance.The Pesticide Stewardship Alliance (TPSA) is an organization of federal, state and local governmental agencies, educational and research institutions, public organizations, private corporations and individuals that are actively involved in different aspects of pesticide stewardship. I sat down recently with Jennifer Thomason, the President of TPSA, to find out what the TPSA has in store for 2025.
Sincerely,
Lindsay Thompson
Executive Director
2,4-D Research Task Force
What are the 2025 priorities for TPSA?
TPSA is celebrating 25 years in 2025! While that’s certainly an accomplishment and will be recognized by TPSA this year., The longevity of TPSA supports its continued mission acting as an organization for federal, state, and local governmental agencies, educational and research institutions, public organizations, private corporations, and individuals to collaborate on many common aspects of pesticide stewardship. In 2025, TPSA will maintain its focus on its collaborative activities via the 2025 TPSA Annual Conference, while also maintaining its resource tools such as the Treated Seed Life-Cycle Guidance Map and State Pesticide Disposal Database and continuing to monitor pesticide stewardship topics key for its membership.
What threats and opportunities do you see for your members?
TPSA members have a great opportunity to engage with various stakeholders to promote pesticide stewardship due to our diverse membership across sectors. Effective stewardship will allow for the continued use and availability of pesticides. The benefits of pesticides are often overlooked and instead a lot of negative communications around their use are in the spotlight. We need people committed to promoting and ensuring safe and sustainable use.
Can you tell me about the importance of stewardship in pesticide application?
Stewardship is certainly important in pesticide application. It considers all aspects of the application including impact to the applicator, the surrounding environment, the plant itself, the pesticide container, etc. But pesticide stewardship doesn’t start with the pesticide application, it starts well before during the development of the pesticide active ingredients and products, and considers the entire life-cycle of pesticide products from development, production/packaging, product retirement, and product disposal. An over-arching interpretation of pesticide stewardship is key to sustainable use of pesticides.
Jennifer Thomason, Ph.D., CIH, is currently the President of TPSA. Jennifer is the Group Leader, Occupational and Residential Exposure - North America at Bayer Crop Science. Thomason previously worked as a Senior Exposure and Risk Assessment Scientist at Bayer and also spent time at the Environmental Protection Agency at the start of her career. Jennifer earned her bachelor's degree at James Madison University before earning her Masters degree and Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences and Engineering – Industrial Hygiene.
P.S. For those of you interested in learning about the benefits and stewardship practices of 2,4-D, a comprehensive benefits study is available here.
