In 1996, Congress enacted the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) to further protect the American people from the negative effects of agricultural pesticide use.  As part of the act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was to study all the pesticides currently on the market, and determine the amount of risk each caused to the public and the environment.  The use of pesticides which carry too much risk were to be reduced or eliminated.

Companies which carried the registration of these pesticides were required to provide new information to the EPA in order to maintain their registration for use in the United States.  Testing had to include the use of the pesticide on each crop that it would be used on.  Due to the cost of testing and securing the new information, many companies have let registration for use on certain crops lapse.  The companies are assuming that if the crop acreage is small, the pesticide use will also be small, and they would recoup their money from sales to the growers of that crop.

The most common crops losing access to pesticides are called "minor use".  The official definition of  "minor use" is a crop which has a farmgate value of less than one billion dollars per year.  Almost all of Washington's 250 crops are considered minor crops.  Therefore, many growers in the state are losing the means to control pests in their crops.  The result of that is two-fold:

Crop yields are reduced due to increased losses to pests, meaning less food produced

Growers with smaller acreage cannot make a profit at the lower production rate and are closing their farms, reducing food production even more

As a secondary result, more food is imported to maintain the food supply.

Is it important to have a domestic food supply??

If not, remember that farmers in foreign countries are not subject to United States law.  Therefore, imported food will probably be contaminated with residues of pesticides that are banned in the United States.

How do we really make our food safer??

Now for something completely different:  Pesticide Use Data from the US EPA