This week’s Open Mic guest is Chris Novak, President and CEO of CropLife America. With the dust still settling from the mid-term elections, officials with the crop protection industry have set their sights on the lame duck session of Congress, hopeful that Environmental Protection Agency funding and the Pesticide Registration Improvement Renewal Act can see action by legislators. Novak discusses the regulatory bottlenecks at EPA, the impacts on bringing new, more sustainable crop protection chemicals to market, as well as new questions by environmentalists about the Endangered Species Act. Novak says the industry is facing economic headwinds from higher energy and operating costs but expects to have products in place to meet farmer needs for the 2023 crop year.