The largest peach grower in Missouri — Bader Farms — claims Monsanto is responsible for the illegal use of herbicide that damaged its trees over the past two years, said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The lawsuit says 37,000 trees were harmed because of herbicide drift from a field where farmers used unauthorized versions of dicamba on crops, which were genetically engineered by Monsanto to tolerate the weedkiller.
The dicamba-resistant crops went on sale in 2015 but the government did not approve a formulation of dicamba for them until this fall. The lawsuit says Monsanto should have known some farmers would resort to unapproved versions of the weedkiller once they bought the seeds. Dicamba-tolerant crops are attractive because of the emergence of weeds that resist glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world.
Bader Farms is located in Missouri’s “bootheel” region, where most of the complaints about damage from illegal pesticide use have centered. The farm produces half of the peaches in Missouri. Earlier this year, owner Bill Bader told the Post-Dispatch his harvest could be reduced by 40 percent.