State ag agency issues temporary ban on dicamba herbicide

The Missouri Department of Agriculture issued a moratorium Friday afternoon on all use and sale of dicamba products.

The order, effective immediately, seeks to address pesticide drift, which allegedly has damaged thousands of acres of crops in Missouri and surrounding states, according to a news release.

So far this year, the Bureau of Pesticide Control has received more than 130 pesticide-drift complaints.

“We want to protect farmers and their livelihoods,” director of agriculture Chris Chinn said in the release. “At the same time, my commitment to technology and innovation in agriculture is unwavering. That’s why I am asking the makers of these approved post-emergent products, researchers and farmers to work with us to determine how we can allow applications to resume this growing season, under certain agreed-upon conditions.”

Dicamba pesticides are effective at controlling weeds resistant to other pesticides and thereby are a boon to farmers who plant dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean seeds.

The problem in recent years, however, has come when dicamba compounds drift onto ajacent fields, where they can damage crops not designed to handle dicamba.

Disputes over dicamba and damage from pesticide drift have played a role in the homicide of a farmer, when Allan Curtis Jones of Arbyrd, Missouri, was charged in the death of Mike Wallace of Manila, Arkansas, in October; several regulatory bills proposed in the Missouri Legislature; and a lawsuit filed by Missouri’s largest peach producer against St. Louis-based Monsanto.

Several new dicamba-containing formulas this year were marketed as being less prone to evaporation and drift, but those formulas also are subject to the ban.

The order is scheduled to remain in effect until Dec. 1, according to the release.

“With only a small window left for application in this growing season, I understand the critical need to resolve this issue,” Chinn said in the release. “I look forward to working with our farmers, researchers and industry partners to find an immediate solution.”

Missouri Farm Bureau president Blake Hurst expressed support for the order Friday afternoon.

“There are no good answers, no easy solutions, but the department has acted in a way that both protects a technology important to crop farmers in our state, while also protecting those who are suffering losses,” Hurst said in a separate news release.

“It is now incumbent on the companies active in this market to work with the department to find a way forward that protects both farmers at risk of losing their crops to weed infestation and those farmers’ neighbors.”

tgraef@semissourian.com

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