Southern Illinois farmer's grapevines destroyed by dicamba; four years of work lost

It takes four years to bring Chardonel grapes to first harvest.

After planting, the vine sprouts take the first growing season to stretch to the trellis up 5 or 6 feet off the ground. The second season, growers train the vines to sit evenly along the trellis, sculpting them for maximum yield.

While the vines will try to form grapes in the third year, growers typically pare them off. It’s better the vines spend the season fortifying their roots than bringing sub-par fruit.

“And that fourth year is the final payoff,” said Illinois farmer Jerry Thurston. “You get to pick them.”

This July, it took only four days for Thurston’s Chardonel vines to wither, along with a portion of his soybean crop. He’s spent the four months since navigating fallout from a now-common farming trouble: accidental exposure to dicamba herbicide.

Thurston and his family operate Spring Valley Farm & Vineyard in Pulaski, Illinois, about 10 miles north of Cairo, Illinois. The farm has been in the family since 1911. Thurston, now 53, planted his first vineyard when he took the reins in 1985.

“We’ve got a very diversified operation,” he said. “Eight-hundred-fifty acres of row crops.”

His vegetables end up in area Walmart and Schnucks stores, while his wine grapes typically go to area wineries. None of the crops he plants is designed for use with dicamba.

Dicamba is a type of herbicide designed for use on genetically modified beans, typically soybeans. While it can be an effective tool for farmers battling weeds, improper use can be devastating to crops not designed to withstand it.

While Thurston could have planted dicamba-resistant soybeans, he found the risk of the herbicide drifting onto his specialty crops was too great.

“As a specialty-crop grower, I definitely do not want dicamba beans on my farm,” he said. “I don’t even want my neighbor growing it, so I’m sure not going to.”

But his neighbor had done just that. The neighboring land recently had changed hands, and Thurston hadn’t met the young farmer tending it, but Thurston hadn’t had any problems in the past.

“It was his second year,” Thurston said. “He planted corn last year; no issues.”

But July 10, Thurston’s father ­— also named Jerry — saw the neighbor spraying. The big, self-propelled sprayer with the 90-foot boom was making its passes, but the weather was wrong. The wind was too high.

“At the time, we were very heavy into vegetable farming. Everything you could think of, we were picking,” Thurston recalled. “It was extremely windy. [My father] called me and said, ‘It’s very windy, and it’s blowing right toward you.’”

That was about 10:30 a.m. About 5 p.m., when the neighbor packed up his sprayer and left, Thurston’s father followed him. The man had been contracted to spray a farm south of Thurston’s home but still adjacent to a part of Thurston’s soybean fields.

“He tried to get him to stop. [My father] told [the landowner] it was too windy, but he wasn’t able to get him stopped,” Thurston said. “It doesn’t take long with one of those big sprayers. We have one, too. You can spray hundreds of acres in a day with it. Travel 10, 11 miles an hour. You can get a lot done in a short amount of time. And you can cause a lot of damage in a short amount of time.”

The soybeans were the first to show trouble.

“It was immediate,” Thurston said. “You could see the crinkling at the edges of the leaves, which is a sign of dicamba damage.”

Near his home, Thurston found a line of damage that cut clear across a 40-acre soybean field and straight into his vineyard.

“Probably four days, it started showing up on the grape leaves, too,” he said. “They started cupping and bubbling and crinkling. They’re extremely sensitive. They’re actually one of the crops listed on the dicamba label as being sensitive.”

Some of his vineyard was spared. Some older vines survived and brought half a yield.

But by the first week of August, his fledgling Chardonel vines had dropped their leaves. Without leaves, roughly 4 1/2 tons of grapes were wasted on the vine.

He sought out an expert from Blue Sky Wineries, one of his buyers. Her assessment was simple.

“She said, ‘You’re gonna have to tear these out and plant them again,’” he recalled. “And I was just floored. Getting them established, that’s all the hard work. Once they’re established, those vines are expected to produce for 30 years. And now we’re back to square one.”

His losses for the grapes alone were more than $30,000. Then his insurance agency declined his claim.

“Initially, it was denied because the farmer [who did the spraying] had given a statement to the insurance company saying he’d done the spraying on the 9th (of July),” Thurston said.

That would have put the spraying on a day on which the weather was fine for spraying, according to the dicamba’s label guidelines.

Thurston and the spraying farmer had the same insurance company. The insurer’s logic, Thurston said, was if the farmer had sprayed according to guidelines and the drift happened anyway, the culpable party would be Monsanto, the manufacturer.

If that was the case, Thurston said, he’d have been ready to join the talks of a class-action suit against the biological company. He even invited inspectors from a St. Louis law firm — who were preparing for such a lawsuit — to his farm to assess his damages.

But there was, of course, a nagging problem: Thurston’s father had seen the spraying happen on the 10th. The elder Thurston filed a notarized affidavit to that effect with their insurer.

Then they both went to talk with the farmer who had sprayed.

They didn’t want a confrontation, Thurston said. Dicamba-damage disputes have cost at least one farmer’s life in recent years. But they wanted the truth. They pointed out the 9th had been a Sunday.

“And he said, ‘You’re right. I didn’t do it on a Sunday. I did it on the 10th,’” Thurston said.

Then the farmer went to the insurance company and told them the same. Thurston’s claim was approved.

“I take him at his word that he was mistaken about the date,” Thurston said.

He declined to identify the farmer. He said he suspects the man, being young, genuinely was unfamiliar with just how serious herbicide drift can be and how easily it could occur.

“I’m not trying to give him a free ride,” Thurston said. “But I felt like he was handling something that he didn’t know how powerful it was. … I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt, and I’m doing that because he didn’t try to avoid responsibility after he realized he’d given the wrong date. He was at best careless.”

Thurston still is assessing the damage to his soybeans, but the damage to them near his house cost at least $4,000. The damage in his southern field likely will be close to $20,000.

Still, he counts himself lucky it hadn’t been his specialty vegetables. That would mean the possibility of a recall.

“Even if it’s not your fault, you have to get a hold of Walmart and say, ‘We gotta pull these,’” he said. “My biggest fear has always been the vegetable operation, because that’s where I get the majority of my income.”

And he feels lucky his father saw the spraying going on. Had he not, his claim still might be denied.

He said he’s not sure what he can do to hedge against such accidents in the future.

“I trusted the neighbors, but it’s very worrisome going forward,” he said.

Some farmers have begun growing dicamba seeds just so if drift happens, their crops won’t be damaged.

“It might be cheaper than going through insurance,” Thurston said, but he again pointed out that’s not an option in his case.

Instead, he’s hoping for more regulation. Dicamba regulations vary from state to state, and the substance temporarily was banned in Missouri. Lawmakers in affected states have drafted bills curtailing its use.

“I wish it had never come on the market,” Thurston said of dicamba. “Don’t think the regulations are strict enough.”

“It’s one of those things where when the insurance company approved the plan, I felt like I won,” he said. “But what do I gotta do now? I got to start over.”

tgraef@semissouian.com

(573) 388-3627