Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/basf/)
The lawsuit raises the question of what’s next for specialty crop farmers, many of whom have said dicamba damage limits their ability to grow their products and make a living.
We now have an admission of guilt from EPA that it wrongly issued 2018 dicamba registrations for Bayer's XtendiMax herbicide, BASF's Engenia herbicide and Corteva's FeXapan herbicide. New acting assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention Michal Freedhoff said as much to EPA staffers in an internal e-mail on March 10 that read in part:
In a normal year we would be debating several worthy agricultural stories as the most important. We certainly would be taking a hard look at the continuing dicamba herbicide saga. 2020 saw the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit de-register dicamba formulations in the middle of the growing season from Bayer AG, Corteva, and BASF because of shoddy regulatory control at the Environmental Protection Agency:
Internal company records show the companies knew crop damage from their weed killer would be extensive. They sold it anyway.
A jury awarded Bader Farms $250 million in punitive damages after finding Monsanto and BASF knew dicamba would harm crops. A judge reduced the amount.
The American Soybean Association and the Plains Cotton Growers contend the EPA overstepped in its new restrictions on the weed killer dicamba.
The pesticide harmed tens of thousands of farmers, overwhelmed state agriculture departments and damaged research plots across the United States, according to documents the federal agency released Tuesday. Wide swaths of natural areas and rural communities were also poisoned.
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.