Californians for Pesticide Reform

Californians for Pesticide Reform is a statewide coalition of over 200 organizations guided by the belief that together we can fundamentally shift the way pesticides are used in California to build a more just and sustainable food system. Founded in 1996, CPR now has over 30 years of successful movement building and collaborative advocacy experience. 

Our mission is to protect public health, improve environmental quality and support a sustainable and just agricultural system by building a diverse movement across California to change statewide and local pesticide policies and practices.

Our Platform

How We Work Together

CPR uses community organizing, scientific advocacy, policy work, legislation, litigation, community-based bio-monitoring and air monitoring, and media to achieve our goals.

Accomplishments

CPR has advanced landmark protections for farmworkers, children, and communities living near agricultural pesticide use through grassroots organizing, coalition leadership, scientific advocacy, and policy reform. 

CPR helped secure the Healthy Schools Acts of 2000 and 2006, strengthening pesticide notification and integrated pest management in schools and childcare facilities. The coalition also won unprecedented local protection zones near schools, homes, and farmworker labor camps in high-pesticide-use counties. In 2018, CPR won quarter-mile buffer zones around schools for certain pesticide applications around schools and childcare centers. In 2024, CPR helped pass a bill (AB 1864) to help strengthen the enforcement of these regulations to guarantee that children are better protected. 

The coalition also helped defeat highly dangerous pesticides. Following years of scientific advocacy, community testimony, and litigation from CPR and other leading national organizations, methyl iodide, a highly hazardous fumigant proposed for California strawberry fields, was withdrawn from the U.S. market and cancelled in California in 2012.

In 2018, CPR was instrumental in building the awareness and pressure to phase out in California the use of chlorpyrifos, a widely used organophosphate pesticide linked to developmental harm in children and health risks for farmworkers. Community organizing, worker testimony, and public-health advocacy helped build the pressure that led California to cancel chlorpyrifos registrations for most agricultural uses.

CPR has strengthened public participation in pesticide oversight by advocating for the California Department of Pesticide Regulation’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee (EJAC), which uplifts the voices of individuals from communities disproportionately burdened by pesticides.

CPR has been instrumental in supporting community-driven tools such as SprayDays, a first of its kind pesticide application notification system, pesticide air monitoring, biomonitoring, and environmental reporting networks. 

Furthermore, we are very excited to be involved in California's efforts to achieve its vision for a statewide Sustainable Pest Management. 

Together, these accomplishments build community power, improve accountability, and advance a more equitable, health-protective pesticide system.

Because California often sets precedents adopted by other states and federal policymakers, CPR’s work advances pesticide protections and progressive environmental health policy nationwide.