A legislative subcommittee supported the Arkansas State Plant Board’s plan to ban use of the weedkiller dicamba from April 16 to Oct. 31 this year. The bicameral Legislative Council, the main governing body when the state legislature is not in session, is scheduled to take a final vote on the proposal on Friday, said the Associated Press. The plant board issued an emergency ban on the chemical last year amid hundreds of complaints of damage to nearby crops.
State Sen. Bill Sample, co-chair of the Legislative Council, who forced the plant board to take a second look at its proposed ban, now supports that ban, which effectively covers the growing season for row crops. “I was satisfied that the science was proven,” said Sample, according to AP. Monsanto, which developed GMO soybeans and cotton that tolerate dicamba, has filed suit in Arkansas to overturn the ban, claiming it’s an overreach of the state agency’s authority.
“While most states have continued to allow the use of the herbicide under the label instructions approved by the federal Environmental Protection Agency, other states have set cutoff dates based on temperature or the calendar. Arkansas, though, is the only one effectively banning the herbicide throughout the growing season,” said the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Many growers have embraced dicamba as a new tool against invasive weeds that have developed a tolerance for other herbicides. But there are complaints that even the low-volatility formulations of the chemical, which are supposed to pose less of a threat to non-dicamba-resistant crops, can evaporate and drift into nearby fields.