For months, the EPA has been toying with a vital tool for corn growers: Atrazine. Today, the agency announced a revision to the chemical’s registration.

If atrazine is any benchmark, the EPA appears to be opening environmental evaluations to the whims of politics rather than on the basis of science.

The EPA’s decision on atrazine might seem like a small thing if it causes corn yields to dip. But we would see the ramifications on food and the cost of energy.

Grower groups are expressing frustration that EPA did not use “the best available science and data” in its endangered species biological evaluations.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new “biological evaluation” makes access for trusted pesticides such as atrazine and glyphosate even harder.

The herbicide is a staple of many corn fields, particularly in the Midwest.