Action will have "major impacts"

On 3 June the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in the US vacated (nullified) the US EPA's approval of dicamba herbicides applied to GM herbicide-tolerant soybeans and cotton.

This momentous decision, provided it is implemented, will transform US agriculture. It is also a stern rebuke to the EPA for its reckless approval of this drift-prone herbicide, which has destroyed neighbouring crops and set farmer against farmer in America's farming regions.

Tom Philpott of Mother Jones has written an excellent article on the court ruling and its implications – read it below.

Commenting on the ruling, Dr Charles Benbrook, coordinator of the Heartland Study Project on children's health and an independent consultant, said, "This action will have major impacts – about two-thirds of the soybeans and three-quarters of the cotton planted by US farmers in 2020 were dicamba-resistant.
 
"The Appeals Court order will likely stop any further, legal dicamba use on these crops, and as a direct result, will likely increase illegal, off-label applications. The implications of this court order will unfold rapidly.
 
"In addition to a sizable financial hit on Bayer and farmers who have stocked up on dicamba herbicides, this will directly and immediately expand demand and use of Corteva’s DuoEnlist soybeans and cotton engineered to resist 2,4-D and glyphosate, and the FOP [aryloxyphenoxypropionate] herbicides. XtendiMax and DuoEnlist crops deliver comparable benefits to farmers. And this means use of 2,4-D will rise rapidly and bypass glyphosate as the most widely used herbicide in the US within just 2 to 3 years - with major economic, environmental, and public health consequences.
 
"There are many issues wrapped up in the regulatory demise of XtendiMax technology that will play out as Trump’s first term comes to an end. If a new Administration takes over next January, big changes in herbicide regulatory approvals will be high on the agenda of the new EPA."
 
Dr Benbrook draws attention to an article posted on the Hygeia Analytics website two days before the Appeals Court ruling. The article comments on the effect of XtendiMax technology – "making liars of proponents and fools of enablers".
 
For a deep dive into the checkered history of XtendiMax, see the Dicamba Diary and Dicamba Watch on the Heartland Study website.
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A federal court just halted use of a highly controversial herbicide

Tom Philpott
Mother Jones, 5 June 2020
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2020/06/a-federal-court-just-halted-use-of-a-highly-controversial-herbicide/

Farmers planning to spray their fields with dicamba got a rude shock this week.

On Wednesday afternoon, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco made a ruling that sent shockwaves through Midwestern and Southern farm country: It vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’ registrations of an herbicide that has surged in use in recent years—and generated massive controversy for its tendency to drift off-target and damage crops in neighboring fields and other foliage.

The chemical, dicamba, has been around since 1962, but had largely fallen out of favor, because of its tendency to waft. But in 2016, seed/pesticide titan Monsanto—which has since been subsumed by German chemical giant Bayer—released seeds for soybean crops engineered to withstand dicamba and its longtime blockbuster herbicide, glyphosate. Throughout the Midwestern soybean belt and southern cotton belt, farmers had since the mid-1990s been planting seeds engineered to withstand glyphosate, which at first made weed control easy but quickly (through simple evolution) gave rise to a torrent of weeds that could withstand glyphosate, too. The pitch: Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Xtend soybeans and cotton would allow farmers to hit their crops with glyphosate and dicamba, with the latter slaying weeds that had developed resistance to the former.

To address dicamba’s propensity to waft off-target, Monsanto rolled out a new “low-volatility” formulation, which, the company insisted, would kill only targeted weeds if used correctly. The EPA registered Monsanto’s new-fangled dicamba, along with similar versions from rival agrichmical players Bayer and DuPont (which has since combined with Dow and now does agribusiness as Corteva).

The trouble started immediately. In 2017, 2018, and 2019, farmers in the South and Midwest reported millions of acres of damaged crops from wayward dicamba. Public-university weed scientists—normally not ones to make headlines—sounded the alarm, revealing that the EPA had registered the products without proper vetting and warning that drift was inevitable. Monsanto’s response: It attacked the credibility of the scientists. Through it all, Monsanto, now Bayer, denied the problem, blaming any drift damage on farmer error, not its own products. Aggrieved farmers argued with neighbors, resulting in a bevy of lawsuits and even a fatal shooting. Yet sales of Roundup Ready Xtend seeds boomed, at least in part because many farmers figured just paying up for dicamba-resistant seeds was preferable from watching their soybeans and cotton droop from off-target herbicide.

The EPA, meanwhile, stayed on the agrichemical industry’s side, and this year, “60 million acres of dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybeans were slated for 2020 planting,” reports Emily Unglesbee, reporter for the trade journal DTN. That’s a land mass equal to more than half the size of California.

Most of these crops are already planted, and we’re moving into the season when farmers would be spraying dicamba to clear resistant weeds. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to “vacate”—essentially, nullify—the EPA’s approval of these products likely means an abrupt halt to that. The decision rebukes the EPA’s handling of the dicamba mess from the start. The agency “substantially understated” the acreage planted with dicamba-tolerant crops in 2018, refused to acknowledge the extent of crop damage, and “entirely failed to acknowledge the substantial risk that the registrations would have anticompetitive economic effects in the soybean and cotton industries”—a reference to the fact that some farmers felt compelled to buy Bayer’s seeds to avoid damage from dicamba. The kicker: The EPA “entirely failed to acknowledge the risk” that the product would “tear the social fabric of farming communities.”

The ruling leaves farmers who have planted the seeds in a tough spot, as the judges acknowledged. “We acknowledge the difficulties these growers may have in finding effective and legal herbicides to protect their [dicamba-tolerant] crops,” the ruling states. “They have been placed in this situation through no fault of their own. However, the absence of substantial evidence to support the EPA’s decision compels us to vacate the registrations.” Drift aside, glyphosate-resistant weeds are rampant, and thousands of soybean and cotton farmers had stocked up on dicamba to zap them.

The EPA, for its part, is mulling what to tell them. “EPA is currently reviewing the court decision and will move promptly to address the Court’s order,” an agency spokesman said in a Friday afternoon email.

For its part, Bayer denounced the ruling in a statement. “We strongly disagree with the ruling and are assessing our next steps,” the release stated. “We will also await direction from the EPA on actions it may take in response to the ruling.”

US Department of Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue urged the EPA to defy the court ruling. (The USDA does not regulate pesticide application.)

“I encourage the EPA to use any available flexibilities to allow the continued use of already purchased dicamba products, which are a critical tool for American farmers to combat weeds resistant to many other herbicides, in fields that are already planted,” Perdue’s statement reads.

No so fast, says Fertilizer & Chemical Association, a trade group representing agrichemical dealers in that the nation’s number-one soybvean-producing state. In a Thursday statement, the groups says it reached out to the Illinois Department of Agriculture for guidance. “IDA legal counsel has looked at the US 9th Circuit Court ruling on dicamba, and believes it clearly calls for the stop of use, sale and distribution of all uses” of the chemical, the group stated, adding that “we ask for our members to abide by this determination and help communicate this serious message.”

The Ninth Circuit ruling isn’t the only rough news dicamba has generated in recent months, overshadowed by coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and police-brutality unrest. In a paper published on May 1, a group of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and National Cancer Institute scientists a major ongoing research project on pesticides and concluded that people exposed to dicamba in agricultural settings showed “elevated risk” of liver cancer.