CropLife America

From SourceWatch

CropLife America is a trade association representing the manufacturers of pesticides and other agricultural chemicals. It was formerly known as the American Crop Protection Association, and before that as the National Agricultural Chemicals Association.

CropLife America's rhetoric, and its name, indicates a shift in the pesticide industry's rhetoric and approach to public relations in the last decade. "CropLife America's mission," says its website, "is to foster the interests of the general public and CropLife America member companies by promoting innovation and the environmentally sound manufacture, distribution and use of crop protection and production technologies for safe, high-quality, affordable and abundant food, fiber and other crops."

The pesticide industry hopes to be know as the "crop protection" industry. The image it presents is one of a hi-tech, efficient, responsible, and green industry that is already thoroughly regulated to assure the safety of its products. While the industry quietly pursues an anti-regulatory agenda to assure no pesticides would be removed from the market, its trade association claims its aim is to "promote increasingly responsible, science-driven legislation and regulation."

The agricultural chemicals industry's new public face closely resembles the public image of the chemical industry's largest trade group, the American Chemistry Council, under the umbrella of "Responsible Care."

In 2002 CropLife America launched a public relations campaign that emphasized the everyday uses of pesticides and ag biotech, which it says the public often overlooks. This included safe food, and protecting homes and schools, it said. "For too long our industry had focused exclusively on promoting our successes in safety assessment and management," said CropLife president Jay Vroom. "These messages, including rigorous testing and EPA regulations, are valid and continue to resonate, but they are not enough," said Vroom. (Chemical Week; New York; Apr 10, 2002, volume 164, issue 15, p.5)

CropLife shares office space with Responsible Industry for a Sound Environment (RISE), a lobbying and public relations trade organization for the pesticide and fertilizer industry.

In March 2004, CropLife poured funding into a campaign to defeat a Mendocino County ballot initiative - known as Measure H - that would make the country the first to ban genetically engineered crops. In the lead up the the vote CropLife contributed over $500,000 - more than seven times that of the initiative supporters - to defeat the proposal. [1] Despite the massive campaign against the initiative, the bio-tech industry suffered a humiliating defeat. The measure passed by a margin of 56% to 43%. [2]

Els Cooperrider, the owner of a Ukiah organic brew pub and a champion of the initiative told the Press Democrat "passage of Measure H is just the beginning. We're the first county, but the revolution is just starting". [3]

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