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 Farm worker Allan Curtis
Jones, 27, is accused of shooting Wallace, 55, in a confrontation
over dicamba, which Wallace believed had drifted from the farm where
Jones worked to damage his soybean crop. Jones told authorities that
Wallace called him to talk about the spraying. Jones brought his
cousin with him as a witness because he believed Wallace wanted to
fight, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported in October. When the
two men met, Jones told police, Wallace grabbed him by the arm.
Jones said he pulled a handgun from his pocket and fired "until the
gun was empty," Mississippi County Sheriff Dale Cook told the paper.
He is set to go on trial this fall1.
Concern about the herbicide drifting onto unprotected crops,
especially soybeans, has spawned lawsuits and prompted Arkansas and
Missouri to impose temporary bans on dicamba (the ban in Arkansas
continues in 2018). Losses blamed on accidental chemical damage
could climb into the tens of millions of dollars, if not higher, and
may have a ripple effect on other products that rely on soybeans,
including chicken1.
The number of complaints "far exceeds anything we've ever seen,"
Arkansas Plant Board Director Terry Walker recently told lawmakers1.
Dicamba has been around for decades, but problems arose over the
past couple of years as farmers began to use it on soybean and
cotton fields where they planted new seeds engineered to be
resistant to the herbicide. Because it can easily evaporate after
being applied, the chemical sometimes settles onto neighboring
fields. Some farmers illegally sprayed dicamba before federal
regulators approved versions that were designed to be less
volatile1.
The issue illustrates the struggle to control agricultural pests as
they gradually mutate to render the chemicals used against them less
effective. And while some farmers fear damage from their neighbors'
dicamba, others are worried that their fields will be defenseless
against weeds without it1.
The drifting herbicide has been particularly damaging for soybeans.
A group of farmers in Arkansas filed a class-action lawsuit in
federal court against BASF and DuPont, which make dicamba1.
The chemical has hurt other crops too, including vegetables,
peanuts, tomatoes, cucurbits (pumpkins) and ornamentals. As the
damage piles up, dicamba has also made it more difficult for one
company, Ozark Mountain Poultry, to find non-genetically modified
soybeans to use as feed for chickens because more farmers are
relying on seeds engineered by Monsanto to resist the herbicide.
Non-modified soybeans are needed to market chicken as non-GMO1.
Dicamba's makers insist the problem is not with the herbicide but
how some farmers apply it. They say the states should focus on other
restrictions, such as limiting spraying to daytime hours1.
Dicamba is similar to the herbicide 2,4-D. Both act like natural
plant hormones known as auxins. These hormones help to control plant
growth. When plants are treated with dicamba, they grow in abnormal
and uncontrollable ways, and often, the plants die. Dicamba is used
on many broadleaf weeds and woody plants2.
The action of hormone-mimicking dicamba is to cause treated
broadleaf plants to put on unsustainable growth, thereby running out
of nutrients and dying of starvation.
Engenia, XtendiMax and FeXapan are now Restricted Use Pesticides,
which means that only certified applicators (private applicators and
commercial applicators) can purchase these products and a record of
sale must be kept by pesticide dealers who sell the products3.
If you plan to apply these products to soybeans in 2018, the
Illinois Department of Agriculture will require all users of these
products to adhere to all label requirements including completion of
a training program that utilizes training materials developed by the
registrants of the products, namely Monsanto, BASF or DuPont. At
this point, training will be offered only in a classroom setting3.
Dicamba is more environmentally friendly than some other herbacides,
making it desirable. Dicamba breaks down in soil so that half of the
original amount is gone in 30-60 days. Water and microbes in soil
can speed up the breakdown of dicamba2.
But even though it is environmentally friendly, dicamba is not
neighbor friendly. All across Illinois, scouting by agronomists,
weed scientists and farmers revealed cupped leaves and damaged
soybean plants, generally credited to dicamba injury4.
“It’s everywhere,” says Stephanie Porter, sales agronomist with
Burrus Hybrids. Dicamba drift from applications in corn were the
first issues Porter spotted, but then different reports rolled in
from eastern Illinois, southern Illinois and finally northern
Illinois4.
“Most of the recent calls, pictures and texts have been traced back
to dicamba in soybeans,” she explains. How extensive is the problem?
It’s hard to say, Porter notes, as grower applicators and co-ops
face similar situations. Several farmers are talking through
problems amongst themselves without filing an official claim to the
Illinois Department of Agriculture4.
A Democratic candidate for governor and part-time farmer wants
Illinois to also ban the use of a controversial herbicide that’s
damaged crops all over the Midwest5.
Bob Daiber said the state should follow the lead of Arkansas and
Missouri, which have approved new rules limiting the use of dicamba.
The Illinois Department of Agriculture did issue new guidance on
dicamba last fall, but Daiber said it doesn’t go far enough5.
[to top of second column] |
 “These do not do any
safeguarding against the real culprit of using dicamba, and that’s
the drift,” Daiber said in an early March broadcast of WGLT’s ‘Sound
Ideas.’ “As we use this on more and more acres, we are going to see
more and more damage5.”
Farmers have used dicamba for many years. Previously used on weed
control in corn, it was applied much earlier in the season, before
soybeans were in the ground. But they used more of it in 2017, and
they used it in a new way, spraying it over soybeans in the heat of
summer, which can cause the chemical to vaporize from soil or leaves
and drift away to damage other plants nearby5.
The danger from dicamba is not from spray drift, but is instead from
‘vapor drift.’ A chemical that cannot produce vapors under normal
operating temperatures (such as amine or salt formulations) can only
cause droplet drift, which is generally limited to relatively short
distances of up to a few hundred yards. This distance can vary
greatly, depending on the specific circumstances of the
application7.
However, herbicides that produce volatile vapors (such as esters)
are a different story. Not only can they drift in droplet form like
amine and salt formulations, they have an additional 'invisible'
form of drift called 'volatile vapor drift'7.
While droplets might move a few hundred yards from the target and
can be seen, vapors have the ability to drift many miles from the
target and are invisible7.
“I believe it’s an herbicide that has the potential to do really
extensive crop damage as the seed system expands in the 2018
planting season,” Daiber said5.
Monsanto insists that its version of dicamba does not drift from the
fields where it is sprayed if farmers use it correctly. The company
sued Arkansas over its dicamba ban5.
It turns out the ban didn’t stop farmers, many desperate to control
problem pigweeds, from spraying various dicamba products on the
crop. The full consequences of those actions won’t be known until
harvest but regulatory officials in several states cite a rough
figure of 200,000 affected acres in the Arkansas, the Missouri
Bootheel and Tennessee6.
Citing new technology that may control vapor drift, Monsanto presses
on with their expansion of Roundup Ready 2 Xtend soybeans. With both
the EU and Chinese approvals of the technology, and confident its
dicamba formulations will be approved by the EPA, Monsanto
“continues to be in a strong position to supply roughly 15 million
U.S. soy acres when the selling season arrives,” reads a company
statement6.
“VaporGrip is a tool to help maintain low-volatility formulations to
minimize off-target movement and make responsible use of the dicamba
technology. It significantly reduces the volatility of current
dicamba products.” “Pending regulatory approval, next year we’ll be
out with a Roundup Ready cropping system that features the VaporGrip
technology, which limits volatility and drift concerns6.”
Kyel Richard, Monsanto’s Product Communications Lead said, “It’s
very important to note that (Monsanto) doesn’t manufacture any
dicamba products. That fact has been lost in some of the
conversation. In the future, we will. But, at this time, it isn’t
our (dicamba) products being used6.”
John Fulton, former Cooperative Extension director for Logan County,
said that some soybeans in Logan County damaged by dicamba actually
were reported to have produced better than nearby beans that did not
have any dicamba exposure, because of limited exposure and the
hormone effect. It produced a more compact plant with closer notes
and more pods.
Dicamba may be good for Monsanto, BASF and DuPont profits, and may
in fact be better for the environment than some other weed killers
traditionally used, but dicamba is a strain on regulatory agencies
and a detriment to neighborly relations.
[Jim Youngquist]
1 -
Weed killer turns neighbor against neighbor in
farm country
2 -
Dicamba General Fact Sheet
3 -
Illinois Department of Agriculture: Special Dicamba Training
4 -
Prairie Farmer: Dicamba: What’s happening in
Illinois
5 -
GLT89.1: Democrat Daiber Pushes Dicamba
Herbicide Ban For Illinois Farming By Ryan Denham
6 -
Delta FarmPress: Monsanto explains actions as
dicamba drift fallout continues By David Bennett
7 -
Agriculture Victoria: Volatile vapour drift
risk
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