Currently browsing posts about: Herbicides

A press release from The Center for Food Safety announces that the agribusiness giant Corteva is dropping its “Plant-Killing Pesticide Dicamba Amid Legal Battles, Drift Concerns.”

Dicamba, like glyphosate, is a controversial herbicide widely used in conjunction with crops genetically modified to resist it.  Why controversial?

• It is potentially toxic to adults, children, and pets.
• It drifts long distances and kills “non-target” crops that are not genetically modified—those that are organically grown, for example.

National Pesticide Information Network Fact Sheet on Dicamba has a Q and A.

What are some signs and symptoms from a brief exposure to dicamba?

Pure dicamba is low in toxicity if breathed. If inhaled, people may experience dizziness, and irritation of the nose, resulting in coughing. If you get pure dicamba on your skin, it is low in toxicity, however skin irritation may develop. If you get dicamba in your eyes, it is moderately toxic. If dicamba is swallowed, people have reported symptoms such as vomiting, loss of appetite and muscle spasms. If a large amount is swallowed, diarrhea and abdominal pain have been reported.

Pets may be exposed to dicamba if they come into contact with plants that have been treated with dicamba, either by eating the plants or walking through an area where dicamba was applied. Signs that a dog or a cat may have been exposed to dicamba include shortness of breath, muscle spasms and the animal may produce a lot of saliva. Birds may also be exposed to dicamba by eating dicamba granules and signs include wing drop, a loss of controlled movements, and weakness.

The Missouri Department of Agriculture also has a Fact Sheet.  It reviews damages caused by this herbicide and complaints about it.

Dicamba is a highly volatile chemical that can damage non-target plant species through spray drift and/or volatilization (vapor drift). Misuse of dicamba products may cause serious damage to non-dicamba-tolerant soybeans, sensitive crops, non-crop plants, and endangered species.

The Center for Food Safety press release explains some history:

In June 2020, a federal appeals court prohibited the spraying of dicamba on GE crops, in response to a lawsuit brought by farming and environmental groups led by Center for Food Safety (CFS). The Court ruled that EPA had failed to estimate the “enormous and unprecedented damage” caused by dicamba drift, which triggered strife that “has torn apart the social fabric of many farming communities.” Just a few months later, Trump’s EPA re-approved the dicamba products, made by Bayer and BASF. CFS and allies are back in court challenging this unlawful decision. Press reports suggest Biden’s EPA will allow continued use for at least a year, permitting a fifth year of devastating dicamba drift damage.

In another landmark lawsuit against Monsanto (now owned by Bayer) and BASF, Missouri farmer Bill Bader was awarded $75 million for dicamba drift damage that devastated his peach orchard.

As Bill Freese, the Center’s director, points out, “If even an agrichemical giant like Corteva is dropping dicamba to avoid liability from the enormous, widely-documented drift damage it causes, what will it take for the Biden Administration to end the use of these hazardous products on America’s croplands for good?”

Week killers do their job but also cause problems: illness among people exposed to them (especially farm workers), induction of resistance, and killing weeds in places they are not supposed to be.

Illnesses: The most well known is the non-Hodgkins lymphoma associated with use of glyphosate (Roundup).

Weed resistance: This chart from the University of Minnesota shows the number of species resistant to various kinds of herbicides from 1955 to 2020.  GMO crops resistant to glyphosate were first approved in 1994.

Herbicide drift:  This has been a  particular problem with the weed killer dicamba used with GMO corn and soybeans.  It has a particular problem: it drifts, and does so inconveniently over organically produced crops that are not weed resistant, thereby killing them and making organic farmers extremely unhappy but without recourse, apparently.

Now an investigative report from In These Times demonstrates how Monsanto and BASF, the makers of dicamba, knew perfectly well that it drifted and would cause extensive damage, but sold it anyway.

Exec­u­tives from Mon­san­to and BASF, a Ger­man chem­i­cal com­pa­ny that worked with Mon­san­to to launch the sys­tem, knew their dicam­ba weed killers would cause large-scale dam­age to fields across the Unit­ed States but decid­ed to push them on unsus­pect­ing farm­ers any­way, in a bid to cor­ner the soy­bean and cot­ton markets.

The investigation found:

• [Mon­san­to’s] own research showed dicam­ba mixed with oth­er her­bi­cides was more like­ly to cause dam­age. The com­pa­ny also pre­vent­ed inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists from con­duct­ing their own tests and declined to pay for stud­ies that would poten­tial­ly give them more infor­ma­tion about dicamba’s real-world impact.

• Although adver­tised as help­ing out cus­tomers, the com­pa­nies’ inves­ti­ga­tions of drift inci­dents were designed to lim­it their lia­bil­i­ty, find oth­er rea­sons for the dam­age and nev­er end with pay­outs to farm­ers. For exam­ple, BASF told pes­ti­cide appli­ca­tors that some­times it is not safe to spray even if fol­low­ing the label to the let­ter, plac­ing lia­bil­i­ty square­ly on the applicators.

As for recourse:

A fed­er­al court banned the her­bi­cide ear­li­er this year, but the EPA rein­stat­ed dicam­ba for five more years in October.

Ear­li­er this year, a fed­er­al jury sided with a Mis­souri peach farmer who sued the com­pa­nies for dri­ving his orchard out of busi­ness. The jury award­ed Bill Bad­er $15 mil­lion for his loss­es and $250 mil­lion in puni­tive dam­ages designed to pun­ish Bay­er. Bay­er and BASF are appeal­ing the ver­dict. The puni­tive dam­ages were lat­er reduced to $60 mil­lion.

This report is well worth reading for its detailed review of documents.  These demonstrate that Monsanto and BASF could not have cared less about the damage their herbicide might cause.  Monsanto has been purchased by Bayer, which defends its purchase to the hilt.

Bayer’s stock prices declined dramatically after the Monsanto purchase.  It’s hard to feel sorry for either company.