“Off-target” herbicides are creating tremendous discord in farm country, writes weed scientist Ford Baldwin in an essay for Delta Farm Press. Dicamba, 2,4-D, and other auxin herbicides, while powerful weapons against weeds, are difficult to use on large tracts in the summertime, he said. “Because of major off-target issues, regardless of the cause, the dicamba technology has been the most divisive of my career.”
Now a private consultant after a quarter-century career at the University of Arkansas, Baldwin said he appreciates the need for new weed controls in light of herbicide-tolerant weeds. However, some of the new weedkillers, such as dicamba, are difficult to apply and, in some cases, there has been insufficient field-testing of application methods and not enough training. In the past couple of years, seed companies have begun selling GMO cotton and soybean varieties that tolerate dicamba, which can damage sensitive neighboring crops.
“Then when the wheels come off, it is always a label violation and somebody else’s fault,” writes Baldwin. “I don’t know what the reset button looks like, but we cannot continue down the path we are going. … I never dreamed that in my career I would see the magnitude of off-target herbicide issues, the adverse impact they are having, and at the same time folks running around trying to act like everything is okay.”