Seed Act Killed in Colorado Senate Ag
DENVER, CO., March 1, 2026 – SB26-065 Systemic Insecticide Use Limitations was introduced by sponsor Sen. Katie Wallace, a Democrat representing Boulder and Weld Counties. During her introductory comments, Wallace told the room she had never before attended a meeting of the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. The bill, also sponsored by Sen. Cathy Kipp, a Democrat who represents Larimer County; Rep. Elizabeth Velasco, a Democrat who represents Eagle, Garfield, and Pitkin Counties; and Rep. Kyle Brown, a Democrat representing Boulder and Broomfield Counties, seeks to force growers to work with “an approved third-party verifier to determine if such use is necessary and appropriate.” Seed dealers face $50,000 in fines or a revocation of their license for noncompliance with the requirement that they sell treated seed only to growers if the seed use is necessary and appropriate, and expected to be effective. The bill was heard and killed in the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 26, 2026.
Jordan Beasley, deputy commissioner of external affairs at the Colorado Department of Agriculture, said the department is in an amend to support position and said producers will need additional conversations about their concerns.
The amendment requires the third-party verifier to respond to a request to inspect agricultural property in a reasonable amount of time and allows the commissioner to consider emergency planting in determining a reasonable amount of response time; allows an ag producer to obtain a certificate if they are able to demonstrate that there is not an approved verifier able to inspect the acres within a reasonable amount of time; and the report summarizing the assessment and the issuance of an approval or denial within one week following inspection.
Sen. Byron Pelton asked Beasley if CDA is tasked with protecting agriculture, why CDA would support this bill and support the need for third party verification to determine the necessity of using thoroughly tested seed products. Beasley said the benefit to producers is the opportunity to choose who the third-party verifier will be that the ag producer hires. That expense to agriculture producers is not included in the fiscal note, which indicates the bill increases state expenditures in the CDA by about $46,000 in FY 2026-27, $608,000 in FY 2027-28, and $268,000 in future years. Beasley said he has had conversations with a number of producers that are on all sides of this issue.
Don Brown, a Yuma County farmer and former Commissioner of Agriculture during the Hickenlooper administration, testified in opposition of the bill. Having been viewing neonics through the lenses of both a regulatory agent and a farmer, Brown said there’s “no bigger expert than someone who has not done it for a living, and I’ve done both.”
Brown spoke to the logistics of using third-party verification to determine the necessity and likelihood of success in using treated seeds on every acre, as required by the bill. There is no cost cap on the price charged by third-party verifiers in the bill.
“I worry a great deal about how this is going to be implemented,” he said. “We talk about third-party verifiers, but when are we going to accomplish this task? Are we going to do it in the dead of the winter when the ground is so frozen you couldn’t dig up a bug if you had to? Are we going to do it this time of year? When the ground is sort of thawed but the wire worms haven’t come from their two-foot depth yet?”
Brown was commissioner during the rollout of the hemp program in the state. In the fiscal note of the bill, the number of inspectors was comparable to the number of hemp inspectors at the time. Brown said there were 16,000 hemp farms and 3,000 registered hemp growers to be inspected by the 20 hemp acre inspectors.
“When you look at that in real terms, the hemp inspectors in 2023 only had 772 acres to look at, which means they each had about 38.6 acres” he said. “If we take the 160 inspectors (in the fiscal note), each inspector will have to do 26,000 acres versus 38.6.”
In Yuma County alone, Brown said there are 180,000 acres.
“They’re going to be awful busy, I’m saying,” he said. “This has not been well enough thought out yet. I think that all farmers are sympathetic to the cause, I don’t question that at all. They’re as concerned about the bees as anyone. But they also recognize that they live and die by data. Our farm is a business and it’s run on numbers. If we’re using a product we don’t need, we don’t use it. It’s real simple, besides, our children live there, my grandchildren live there.”
Dr. Darren Lichfeld, an agronomist with 25 years of experience, said toxicity alone does not determine real world danger. He said the risk of exposure to pollinators is extremely low, due to how and when crops are planted in Colorado. Fields, he said, are planted in cool months in cultivated fields that lack flowers and thereby, lack adult pollinators and the seed is planted in a furrow and immediately covered, making the likelihood of exposure extremely low.
“Evaluating toxicity without considering these common agronomic practices does not reflect actual field conditions,” he said.
Marc Arnusch, a farmer, seed dealer with 30 years of experience, and an internationally certified crop advisor spoke against the bill on behalf of his family farm and Colorado Farm Bureau. Arnusch said the repeated suggestion by proponents that the bill is science-based is untrue.
“Seed-applied technology are the very definition of precision agriculture,” he said. “They are applied in milligram quantities exactly at planting, exactly where the plant needs it for early protection. That is targeted risk management, not careless use.”
He said the bill is based on broad assumptions that farmers would use tools without validation, that there are no other tools in the marketplace, and makes decisions for farmers without including farmers.
“Good government slows down long enough to get the facts right, especially when regulating food production,” he said. “This proposal is moving faster than the science and broader than the problem is seeks to solve. Stewardship doesn’t come from paperwork; it comes from people who expect their kids to take over the same lands they’re on.”
Rocky Mountain Farmers Union also spoke in opposition to the bill saying the bill will not benefit pollinators; does not require third-party verifiers to adhere to peer reviewed scientific decision making; and is overly burdensome.
Arnusch said the uniting of the agriculture groups in the state in opposition to the bill supported by the CDA demonstrates that the conversations with stakeholders didn’t occur. Other who spoke in support cited similar bills in Quebec, Vermont, and New York. Opponents spoke to the differences in climate, agriculture production, and pest pressure.
Sen. Wallace said members of the committee and members of the press have told her that farmers in support of the bill are not real farmers. She also said Colorado Farm Bureau and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union claimed to speak for all farmers and offered Soleil Washburn the opportunity to weigh in. Washburn, a Colorado Springs-based organic produce farmer, supports the bill in part because she said the success of her farm relies on pollinators. She listed off many of the 150 varieties of produce grown on her farm and said they would fail if not for pollinators. Though none of the crops she listed are included in the bill, she is concerned about pollinator health due to the unnecessary use of treated seeds and confirmed that she is, in response to Sen. Wallace, a real farmer.
In closure, Sen. Kipp asked the Committee to consider the possibility that the science used in testimony in support of the bill is correct. She said the bill is not anti-agriculture but protects farmers from a captured market and protects water, soil, and children. Sen. Wallace said neonics are used because the system benefiting large corporations has normalized their use. She said it is difficult to come to the historic capitol building and reckon with the 150-year history of poor decision making in the state. She said the bill gave the opportunity to lead with science, responsibility, and foresight.
Sen. Rod Pelton said he can’t support a bill that requires a farmer to ask permission from the government to use widely accepted farming practices on their farms. Sen. Nick Hinrichsen said he heard unanimous opposition from farmers in the Pueblo area and sought out additional scientific studies and said while the topic should be discussed further, he will not support. Chair Dylan Roberts said while toxins in the environment are worth addressing, it’s clear that the agriculture community sees this bill as a monumental bill and the engagement of both sides has not happened.
If this is a priority of CDA, if this is something that the Governor supports, he’s had eight years for his administration to be out there trying to move this ball forward with voluntary measures or with more measured steps rather than this giant step,” Roberts said, “It doesn’t sound like CDA was involved with your stakeholding until very recently which is strange to me, so I’m appreciative of the coalition that has come together but if we’re going to make big changes in agriculture, and I take this seriously as the chair of the agriculture committee, it needs to be bringing more people along in order for it to be successful and sustainable.”
Roberts warned opponents that the topic is not going to go away.
The bill was held over indefinitely and will not continue to the appropriations committee.
Source: Rachel Gabel, The Fence Post Magazine
