A class-action lawsuit filed in federal court in St. Louis accuses sales representatives of Monsanto, the world’s largest seed and ag-chemical company, “of secretly giving farmers assurances that using unauthorized or ‘off-label’ spray varieties would be all right,” reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “That’s one of many allegations in the suit to place blame from soaring complaints of dicamba damage on companies that produce the weedkiller and accompanying seed varieties.”
Growers have embraced dicamba as new chemical tool against invasive weeds that are developing resistance to other weedkillers. New GMO varieties of cotton and soybeans withstand doses of the herbicide but many formulations of dicamba, a weedkiller that has been in use for half a century, are prone to vaporize and are suspected of drifting into neighboring fields. Arkansas has banned use of dicamba on row crops for the rest of this growing season and Missouri allows growers to use only three new, drift-resistant formulations of dicamba and also tightened the application rules. To date, the Arkansas plant board has received 720 complaints of crop damage. Missouri has logged more than 140 complaints.
Monsanto has publicly urged growers to follow the rules on dicamba and to use the new, less-volatile formulations. The lawsuit, filed against Monsanto, BASF and DuPont Pioneer, lists seven Arkansas farms as plaintiffs. Said the newspaper, “The suit says the defendants ‘actually benefit’ from rampant drift, because it pressures farmers to adopt dicamba-tolerant seed to avoid damage.”