Pesticide Drift: The Label Is the Law

Welcome back to Season III of At the Iowa Farm Table!

This week Beth Hoffman digs into pesticide drift with Amanda Severson (Grand View Beef), Joel Meyer (Meyer Agri-Air Inc), and Rob Faux (a farmer and communications at Pesticide Action and Agroecology Network). You’ll learn about how the laws around drift are determined and what happens when they are broken. And all in 16 minutes!

The full transcript of the show is included below if you prefer reading to listening. You can also refer to it if you feel like you missed something said in the show. There are also links in the transcript (and in the resources list below) for you to see for yourself where data was found.

The Iowa Food System Coalition has also done a series of interviews with Iowa’s federal and state candidates—and asked them all about what they’d do about pesticide drift. Watch the 2026 Candidate Conversations to hear their responses.

Related Podcasts Mentioned in Episode

* Drenched in Chemicals

* Iowa, Farming and Cancer: What Do We Really Know?

Transcript

[Amanda Severson] I was sitting here at my desk. And there was somebody applying fungicide. I didn’t really think anything of it because they were flying back and forth, and it was loud and distracting, but they were over the field.

[Beth Hoffman] Amanda Severson and her husband Knute own Grand View Beef, an operation in north central Iowa specializing in grass feeding and finishing beef.

[AS] But then all of a sudden, I just watched as the plane looked like it was coming just straight at me, and he turned it off where he was supposed to, but you just kind of watched, like, this l- liquid whoosh come and land in my grass.

[BH] She and her family experienced a pesticide drift incident in the summer of 2026.

[AS] Our kids were actually outside. And I had to tell them, “Sorry, you got to come inside.” And then the next time they went out to the garden, I said, “I’m sorry, but you have to bring your cherry tomatoes in and we have to wash them now.”

[BH] According to the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship (aka IDALS), there were 257 reported pesticide drift incidents in Iowa in 2025. That’s a number that has not really gone up or down significantly in about a decade. But Amanda Severson and her husband Knute decided NOT to report the incident.

[AS] What Knute and I do here is already incredibly unique. There’s a lot of eyes on us, and not all of them positive, right? So we’ve always just kind of focused on, [00:11:00] let’s tell our story, let’s keep our heads down, do our best, love our neighbors and support them, and those are the ways that we can make small changes… 12:30 you just hate to, like, burn a bridge by being negative.

Short music to transition

[AS] You know, when, when spraying chemicals is the norm in a farm community- It’s really hard to be the one to say, “Are we supposed to be doing that? Is that okay? Can you change this?” Because none of the other neighbors are asking for it, it’s just us. So it gets a little challenging, knowing when to [00:20:00] speak up. 12:30 It’s such a hard call to make.

[BH] The Severson’s are likely not alone. Many of us would rather not make waves with our neighbors, especially those of us who farm differently from the corn and beans most of our neighbors grow. Plus, it takes time and energy to figure out the laws, to do all the paperwork, and pay for the lawyers.

[AS] I did try to look up after that happened, like what was the distance supposed to be and, I mean, because they just kind of [00:15:00] flew on our gravel road and did a pass. And I’m like, are they supposed to be leaving a buffer?.. I should do more research. But I think unfortunately we’ve normalized it. Like,... “Oh, well, we’re the weird ones, so we’re not going to complain. We’ll just keep quiet.”

MUSIC

[BH] I’m Beth Hoffman, journalist, author and farmer. And this is Season III of At the Iowa Farm Table, a production of the Iowa Food System Coalition. This week we’re talking about pesticide drift– how it happens and what can be done about it.

But let’s start at the beginning–what is pesticide drift?

According to IDALS pesticide drift is (quote) “the movement of pesticide dust or droplets through the air at the time of application or soon after, to any site other than the area intended.”

The definition continues “Avoiding ALL off-site movement is the responsibility of the applicator. All pesticide applicators must always read and follow label directions, including checking supplemental labels for additional information. The Label is the Law!”

The label is the law. But having a law and enforcing it are two different things, as we will hear.

[Joel Meyer] The label is designed to give us direction

[BH] That’s Joel Meyer, the president of Meyer Agri-Air Incorporated, an Agricultural Aviation comp