By Kenny Stancil A new report released Monday by a federal oversight agency revealed that before former President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency reapproved use of dicamba in 2018, high-ranking officials in the administration intentionally excluded scientific evidence of certain hazards related to the herbicide, including the risk of widespread drift damage. The Office of […]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced Wednesday that it would allow farmers to continue spraying the controversial pesticide dicamba for the next two years. Dicamba is sold by Monsanto to be used on soybean and cotton plants genetically engineered to be resistant to the weedkiller. The problem is that it drifts on the wind, […]
Wine makers in West Texas are reeling from herbicide drift injuries on their grapevines, an emerging threat to the state’s $13 billion a year industry, NPR’s Morning Edition reported Tuesday. The damage likely originates from use of Monsanto’s dicamba and Dow’s 2,4-D formulations on nearby cotton fields. The companies sell cotton seeds that are genetically […]
Two of the nation’s largest independent seed sellers, Beck’s Hybrids and Stine Seed, are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to place limits on the spraying of the drift-prone pesticide dicamba, Reuters reported. This could potentially hurt Monsanto, which along with DowDupont and BASF SE, makes dicamba formulations to use on Monsanto’s Xtend seeds […]
A University of Missouri report released Thursday estimates that drift damage from the pesticide dicamba has occurred across 1.1 million acres of agricultural crops, trees and other plants so far this year. This comes less than a year after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and many states introduced additional restrictions meant to prevent off-target […]
University weed scientists have reported roughly 383,000 acres of soybean injured by a weedkiller called dicamba so far in 2018, according to University of Missouri plant sciences professor, Kevin Bradley. Dicamba destroys mostly everything in its path except the crops that are genetically engineered (GE) to resist it. The drift-prone chemical can be picked up […]
America’s national wildlife refuges are being doused with hundreds of thousands of pounds of dangerous agricultural pesticides every year, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis by the Center for Biological Diversity. The Center for Biological Diversity report, No Refuge, reveals that an estimated 490,000 pounds of pesticides were dumped on commodity crops like corn, soybeans and […]
The yearly count of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico, released Monday, shows a decrease from last year’s count and confirms the iconic orange and black butterfly is still very much at risk. The count of 2.48 hectares of occupied winter habitat is down from 2.91 hectares last winter. Overall, monarchs have declined by more than […]
Dicamba—a drift-prone herbicide linked to millions of acres of off-target crop damage across in 17 states—destroys mostly everything in its path except the crops that are genetically engineered to resist it. It’s so damaging that several states, including Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri have introduced temporary bans on the weedkiller. There’s now another reason to worry […]