On Halloween, and in the shadow of the upcoming and all-consuming midterm election, the U.S. EPA announced their much-awaited decision on the fate of the controversial herbicide dicamba. Despite ample documentation of the chemical’s habit of vaporizing and moving miles through the air to land on and damage or kill unintended plants and trees, the agency approved the chemical for use on dicamba resistant soybean and cotton for two more years.
For two years, dicamba use has skyrocketed, and the results have confirmed the worst fears of opponents of the volatile herbicide. Farmers that grow everything from non-GMO soybeans to grapes, peaches, tomatoes, and peppers have suffered crop damage and faced serious financial burden. But that’s not all; dicamba is also negatively impacting apiaries and honey production. Because the chemical is a “plant growth regulator,” it affects how plants grow and develop, and in many species, we don’t yet fully understand how those effects manifest. We do know that depending on the timing, level of exposure, and overall plant health, pollination and fruit/seed development can be altered and/or greatly reduced. This is bad news, and one more potentially huge stressor for pollinators and wildlife that depend on pollen, nectar, fruits, and seeds.
This summer, Prairie Rivers Network and several partners submitted a joint comment letter to the U.S. EPA asking them to decline the renewal for dicamba’s registration. We stand by our opinion that this chemical, one that does not obey farm boundaries and is uncontrollable, has no place in agriculture. Additionally, there are other herbicides that are prone to move off-site and cause unintended harm. For example, recent years have seen an increase in plant injury related to exposure to the widely-used herbicide 2, 4-D. Nevertheless, the release of the new “low volatile” formulations of dicamba has led to an unprecedented amount of injury to native trees, specialty crops, and pollinator habitat across many states.
We at PRN – alongside our valuable partners – are working hard to help build awareness of these issues and to protect the rights of farmers to grow the crops they want, the rights for home gardeners to enjoy the produce and beauty of their own gardens, and the rights for wildlife to have the habitat and food resources they require protected from this harmful chemical.
Unfortunately, many states now have a huge task at hand. For the next two years we need to heighten public awareness of this issue, work together to monitor and document suspected off target herbicide damage and inform landowners about the importance of filing reports of suspected herbicide injury with the Department of Agriculture. We need to make our collective voice heard that chemical trespass is unacceptable.
