(NAFB) – The Biden EPA’s decision to ban use of pesticide chlorpyrifos (Klohr-PEER-uh-fohs) widely used on food crops but linked to neurological damage in children, is posing new problems for fruit, vegetable and soybean growers.

EPA’s action reverses a 2017 Trump EPA move to keep chlorpyrifos on the market and implements a federal court order to limit the pesticide to only safe uses such as on cotton.

But American Farm Bureau’s Sam Kieffer says producers, largely soybean and fruit and vegetable growers, must now turn to fewer, less effective and more expensive pesticides.

Chlorpyrifos has proven effective, even when other pesticides failed.

AFBF argues chlorpyrifos is a “valuable crop protection tool with no viable alternative.”

EPA’s action appears to take effect immediately, even for on-farm stocks, and ends a 14-year fight between environmental and agribusiness groups.