CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. - In July 2016, Bill Bader, frustrated by the second straight year of alleged dicamba damage to his peach trees, got out his invoice book and hand wrote bills to his neighbors he suspected of illegally spraying the herbicide: $720,000 to one, $660,000 to another and $1.2 million to a third, according to testimony in federal court this week.
Bader wrote out the biggest bill - $3.3 million for damages to peaches and the environment - to Monsanto, the St. Louis-based agribusiness company he blamed for the damage from the volatile weed killer. “I made a mistake, and I was blowing off steam,” Bader testified on Wednesday in the second week of a trial of a lawsuit he filed against German agribusiness giants Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, and BASF. “I was hoping to get their attention.”
Bader Farms, the largest peach producer in Missouri, is seeking $20.9 damages.