Home Markets Farmers can use dicamba weedkillers already in the market

Farmers can use dicamba weedkillers already in the market

by admin

Farmers will be able to use their existing stocks of dicamba weedkillers during the 2024 growing season, despite a recent federal court ruling that blocked the controversial products from being sprayed over crops.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said last week it will permit millions of gallons of three leading dicamba herbicides — from agribusiness companies Bayer, BASF and Syngenta — to be sprayed on soybean and cotton plant varieties that are engineered to withstand the chemical.

The EPA’s announcement was applauded by major dicamba producers like Bayer, which has its North American crop science division headquartered in the St. Louis area.

“Most of the XtendiMax herbicide we intended to sell for the 2024 season is out in the channel, with distribution partners, retailers and farmers,” the company said in a statement last week.

People are also reading…

The herbicides have sparked both controversy and lawsuits throughout recent years because dicamba can easily vaporize and drift off target, where it poses a threat to crops and plants that aren’t specially modified to tolerate the weedkiller. Crop damage linked to the chemical has been reported across millions of acres of U.S. farmland in the past decade, as well as to trees in forests and neighborhoods and other plant varieties.







Soybeans with suspected dicamba damage are seen north of Flatville, Ill., on Aug. 21, 2019.




Some farmers have been strongly critical of the Feb. 6 Arizona court ruling to bar the weedkillers — especially for its timing because many growers made decisions months ago about which herbicides to buy and use in 2024. Many also hail dicamba as a needed herbicide, particularly as weeds develop resistance to longtime weedkilling staples, such as Roundup.

The EPA’s decision will now allow growers to use dicamba that is already in their possession and will also permit the use of dicamba products that were already “packaged, labeled, and released for shipment” as of Feb. 6. The agency’s order said that “several million gallons of dicamba have already entered the channels of trade” this year, according to industry estimates.

The EPA called its move to allow limited use of the products “imperative,” adding that it would prevent the unlawful use of more “volatile” dicamba substitutes that can trigger greater offsite movement. Such problems have played out and caused widespread crop damage during past times when newer forms of dicamba herbicides were unavailable, such as in 2016.

The EPA also said that growers will still need to apply the herbicides in compliance with any other restrictions. Some states, for example, have enacted rules aimed to reduce off-target dicamba drift, such as bans on spraying the chemical during the hottest parts of the year or in other conditions that can promote its movement. (Courts, however, have cited substantial noncompliance with those rules, and “the near impossibility” of following them in “real-world farming conditions.”)

Gerry Scanlan and Glen Schuetz believe chemicals sprayed on nearby farmland drifted and made trees on land they own sick, causing the trees’ health to decline quickly. Video by Allie Schallert, [email protected]



You may also like

Leave a Comment