Investigate Midwest (https://investigatemidwest.org/tag/pesticide-drift/)
With investigations sometimes taking over a year, farmers are demanding shorter wait times from the state's agriculture department.
In summer 2020, a federal court ruled the EPA showed too much deference to Bayer when it approved the company’s dicamba herbicide. This invalidated the approval. But, weeks later, Bayer began working the EPA again, according to newly obtained emails.
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:
After five years of reported crop damage by the weed killer dicamba, German agribusiness companies Bayer and BASF will head to trial next week to defend themselves against charges that they intentionally caused the problem in order to increase their profits.
Last week, we hosted a discussion regarding our pesticide drift sensor project. Twenty-five people from various industries including scientists from the University of Illinois, local public health officials, the Champaign County Farm Bureau, and environmental focus groups gathered at the Champaign-Urbana Public Health Department as we presented our findings from the project and asked for their input.
The current large farms, utilizing far fewer farms than in the past has created population loss that threatens scores of small towns that sprouted on the prairie in a different time, when larger numbers of small farmers depended on them.
For the third straight year, a volatile pesticide is damaging crops across the Midwest and South, despite federal and state efforts to lessen the drift.
Problems the Iowa State Auditor’s office identified in a 2012 audit and subsequent reports and recommendations for investigating Iowa’s pesticide use violations still linger years later.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has extended use of pest control substance, dicamba, until December 20, 2020. What are the new regulations for extended use of the herbicide?