UKIAH, CA., 11/11/26 — If you farm or garden around Ukiah and buy your weed killer at the Tractor Supply on Airport Park Boulevard, the state is about to change what that store can sell you.
The California Department of Pesticide Regulation is putting the entire chain of Tractor Supply stores on probation for five years, starting Dec. 7, for the way the stores sell pesticides. The department says county inspectors cited 65 of the company’s 99 California stores between January 2023 and June 2025.
Ukiah’s was one of them. The department’s accusation against the company says the Mendocino County agricultural commissioner issued a “Decision Report” to the Ukiah store on or about Feb. 1, 2023, for violating three state rules for pesticide dealers. The department sent the accusation to the Mendocino Voice Tuesday. The accusation doesn’t say what the inspector found, and it lists no fine for the Ukiah store.
Probation doesn’t close the store. The state revoked the company’s licenses to sell pesticides, then put the revocation on hold. You can still walk in and buy pesticides, as long as the company follows the state’s conditions for five years.
The state’s conditions bar two kinds of products: restricted pesticides and pesticides that aren’t registered in California.
The accusation lists unregistered products the company did sell in the state, and you may know the names: a Sevin granular insecticide, a Raid flea fogger, Summit mosquito repellent coils, a Pronto glyphosate weed and grass killer and a Gordon’s crabgrass killer. The accusation lists the California registration for each as inactive, some since 2006 and 2009. It doesn’t say which stores sold them.
If you farm, two of the rules in the Ukiah report cover what you can buy. If you grow crops, you need an operator identification number from the county agricultural commissioner before you buy pesticides for that use. Under state rules, crops include fruit, vegetables, grain, animal feed and forage, pasture, commercial nursery stock, cut flowers, Christmas trees and trees grown for lumber. When you buy a farm-use pesticide, the store has to get that number from you and keep a record of the sale.
The accusation says the number is there to keep products made and labeled for farm use from being sold to people who aren’t farming.
For five years you also won’t be able to buy restricted pesticides from Tractor Supply at all, in the store or online. Those are products you need a permit from the agricultural commissioner to buy and use. If you hold one, you’ll have to buy somewhere else.
The accusation names one restricted product: Crossbow, a weed killer that contains 2,4-D. It says the company’s own records show 75 sales of Crossbow to buyers who weren’t asked for a permit, from July 2022 to March 2026. California has restricted 2,4-D in some form since 1949 because it can drift a long way and harm crops it wasn’t aimed at, the accusation says.
The Mendocino Voice asked whether any of those buyers were in Mendocino County. The department said in an email that it is “not able to provide the location of buyers.”
The company also has to send the state a report of its farm-use pesticide sales every three months. The employees it puts in charge of pesticide sales have to take eight hours of training in pesticide law.
Tractor Supply admits the state’s allegations only for the purposes of this case, the settlement agreement says.
If the state finds violations at 10 or more stores in any two-year period, it can revoke every Tractor Supply pesticide license in California. That includes Ukiah’s.