After nearly 1,000 complaints from neighbors about damage from the weedkiller dicamba, the Arkansas State Plant Board banned use of the herbicide on soybeans and cotton during the growing season this year. Yet state officials still are receiving complaints about dicamba, especially in the northeastern corner of the state, near the Missouri border, says NPR’s The Salt, and the state is looking for the culprits.
In some cases, they took samples from sprayer rigs. “In at least a couple of dozen cases, these samples tested positive for the banned chemical. Farmers are now facing investigations that could lead to fines of at least $1,000, up to a maximum of $25,000 per violation,” says NPR.
A couple of farmers told NPR that it’s cheaper to use dicamba, to control invasive weeds, and risk a fine than it would be to use other weed control methods. Another farmer, Tad Nowlin, has seen damage to his soybeans from dicamba. “If other people insist on using dicamba, he may be forced to plant those new dicamba-resistant soybeans because those plants won’t get injured,” reports The Salt.
Dicamba-resistant seed varieties were planted on roughly half of U.S. soybean acres and three-quarters of U.S. cotton land this year. The percentage is likely to rise in 2019 because seed companies have adopted the GMO technology.
The EPA is scheduled to decide this fall whether to tighten its rules on application of dicamba. The two largest independent U.S. seed companies, Stine Seed and Beck’s Hybrids, have urged EPA to ban dicamba on row crops during the summer because the chemical can evaporate from the plants where is is sprayed and be carried by breezes onto nearby fields with crops that are susceptible to damage.