Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/category/dicamba-on-trial/)
German agribusiness companies Bayer and BASF face allegations in a civil lawsuit that they created circumstances that damaged millions of acres of crops by the weed killer dicamba in order to increase profits from a set of new dicamba-related products offered for sale beginning in 2015.
A trial of the lawsuit, originally filed in November 2016 by southeastern Missouri peach farmer Bill Bader, began Jan. 27, 2020, and is expected to last two to three weeks. The lawsuit initially named Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018.
The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting is one of the few media outlets covering each day of the groundbreaking trial as part of an in-depth project on dicamba, its makers and its impact.
This project is supported with a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism (www.fij.org).
Bayer has reached a $400 million settlement with farmers whose crops have been damaged by drift from the herbicide dicamba, the company announced Wednesday. The settlement was announced alongside the company’s $10 billion settlement over claims that the herbicide Roundup causes cancer.
A request to hold the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in contempt of a June 3 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals order to vacate registrations of the weed killer dicamba was denied Friday.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency defended its decision to allow farmers to continue to spray a recently banned herbicide through July 31 in a court filing on Tuesday evening. The agency argued that it has the power to regulate existing stocks of herbicides that have been canceled.
Forest health experts said trees are being damaged from Indiana to Kansas, from North Dakota to Arkansas. Cupped up leaves, the most easily recognized symptom, can be seen in towns miles away from agricultural fields, as well as in nature preserves and state parks set aside as refuges for wildlife, experts said.
The filing, issued late Thursday night, asked the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to hold EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler in contempt for refusing to abide by the order.
The Trump administration announced on Monday that farmers will be able to continue to spray dicamba through July 31, an apparent rejection of a federal court ruling issued last week that immediately banned the herbicide’s use over-the-top of soybean and cotton crops.
Soybean and cotton farmers, pesticide applicators and agriculture officials across the country scrambled for guidance after a federal court ruling to ban the popular pesticide dicamba this week, which means that many farmers no longer have a herbicide that will work to kill weeds in their fields. In some cases, the uncontrolled weeds may damage entire crop fields, costing farmers thousands of dollars.
Soybean and cotton farmers, pesticide applicators and ag officials across the United States are scrambling Thursday morning to figure out what Wednesday's vacature of dicamba-based herbicides means for the 2020 growing season.
Farmers can no longer spray the controversial pesticide dicamba over-the-top of genetically modified soybeans and cotton, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
As U.S. soybean and cotton farmers work to get their 2020 crops planted, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that has the potential to disallow the spraying of dicamba this growing season.