The fact is Monsanto, Dow and BASF’s “Dicamba” herbicides are all fatally flawed and readily volatilize and disperse off-site which then causes unwanted trespass and severe harm or destruction to neighboring crops.
All too often GE soy farmers who use this deadly chemical feel justified in using Dicamba on their Dicamba-Resistant GE Soy and pooh-pooh the right of neighbors to be free of unwanted – and extremely costly – chemical trespass.
EPA has royally failed in its central role to “protect the environment” and in doing so has created ugly civil-war-like strife in rural America pitting neighbor against neighbor.
‘Civil Eats’ reports. Jim
“Dicamba was first registered in the U.S. in 1967. Known to be volatile, becoming vapor at high temperatures, it was typically only used to clear fields of weeds before planting in late fall or early winter—at times when it would do little damage to nearby plants and didn’t impact growing crops. The new formulations, introduced by Monsanto (now Bayer), Dupont, and BASF in 2016 and 2017, claimed to lower dicamba’s volatility, and therefore its drift potential, in warm spring and summer weather. But the herbicides have proved so problematic for neighboring farms that both Arkansas and Missouri placed temporary bans on them in 2017.
“Independent researchers were not allowed to test the products’ volatility before they were registered, and many are still struggling to get a clear picture of how it moves and under which conditions it volatilizes. Many pesticide experts shared a common a sense of dread when dicamba was first registered for use on soybeans and cotton—but the ensuing damage exceeded their fears. ‘Even the most pessimistic pesticide specialist was shocked by the amount of off-target movement and damage in 2017,’ says Andrew Thostenson, a pesticide specialist at North Dakota State University Extension Service in Fargo…
“But impacted neighbors throughout soybean and cotton country are, in a word, pissed. ‘I have never seen an issue that has divided agriculture, as a whole, like this issue has,’ says Jason Norsworthy, a weed scientist at the University of Arkansas. North Dakota State’s Thostenson agrees. In fact, he says he was physically threatened on social media for expressing his views as a university pesticide specialist. ‘I couldn’t have imagined some of the things that have been done and said to me,’ says Thostenson. ‘It’s jarring. It’s scary,’ he says…
“While specialty crops like fruit and vegetables have no defense against pesticide drift, the risk of damage has motivated soybean farmers to adopt dicamba-resistant soybeans to avoid their own losses.”
