Board OKs dicamba use with limits
The state Plant Board on Tuesday afternoon rejected — for now — a proposed ban on the sale and use of the dicamba herbicide this growing season but instead passed further restrictions on its use.
However, about 6:30 p.m., the umbrella agency of the Plant Board — the Department of Agriculture — said the board will have to vote again because of an error in determining how many votes were needed to pass the ban.
The votes came after 3½ hours of debate in a meeting that attracted more than 80 farmers and others with an interest in an issue vexing Arkansas agriculture for the second straight year.
As of the start of the meeting, the Plant Board had received 141 complaints from 17 counties alleging dicamba damage to possibly thousands of acres of crops in the state. About two dozen complaints were filed last year.
Dicamba is a herbicide widely used by farmers to fight pigweed. Some farmers have planted a dicambatolerant variety of cotton and soybeans. But many other farmers have varieties of those crops that aren’t dicamba tolerant. Damage also has been reported to fruits, vegetables and ornamentals across much of the state.
Faced with the complaints and memories of last year, a Plant Board subcommittee last week voted 6-0 to recommend an emergency ban on the sale and use of dicamba.
The proposed ban received eight votes in favor and six against at Tuesday’s meeting. One member was
absent. Two board members, representing the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, do not have votes.
Danny Finch of Jonesboro, a farmer with damaged crops this season and a supporter of the ban, wasn’t allowed to vote. Wade Hodge, the agriculture department’s newly hired attorney, said rules of the attorney general’s office prohibited Finch from voting. Hodge and others at the meeting said nine votes were needed for passage on the 16-member board.
An alternate proposal, allowing the spray but with restrictions, was approved 11-3.
However, the board had 15 members in attendance, meaning that eight votes would have resulted in passage of the ban. The board had five members participating by telephone and 10 members present, including Finch, who was serving as chairman.
Adriane Barnes, a spokesman for the department, said a revote will be conducted at 10 a.m. Friday.
Only one dicamba herbicide — BASF’s Engenia — is legal in Arkansas to spray over the top of crops. The Plant Board last year approved its use this season in Arkansas because it was thought to be
less susceptible to drifting off target or less likely to lift off sprayed plants during warm nights and spread to neighboring crops.
Plant Board inspectors are investigating the complaints but haven’t determined whether illegal formulations of dicamba are being used, or if Engenia is damaging crops either through misapplication by farmers or despite their strict adherence to label requirements.
The alternative to the ban — allowing Engenia only if spray booms are covered and with a 1-mile buffer between the target field and dicambasusceptible crops — wouldn’t be much help, said Reed Storey of Marvell, whose crops have been damaged for the second straight year.
After the meeting, Storey said the hooded sprayers are rare among commercial applicators who do the majority of spraying in Arkansas fields. The sprayers and the downwind buffer will help only in limiting herbicide drift, not its tendency to evaporate in the middle of the night and lift to fields miles away, Storey said.
Those without hooded sprayers likely will continue to spray Engenia or formulations of dicamba that are less expensive and readily available but more likely to evaporate, Storey said.
Several board members
said during the meeting they were facing a decision that would make no one happy.
Arkansas farmers planted about 3 million acres of soybeans this year, with about 2 million of those being Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant technology, called Xtend. That company’s dicambabased herbicide, called Xtendimax, isn’t yet registered for use in Arkansas.
The eight members who voted for the ban were Russell Black of Fayetteville, Russell Bragg of Fort Smith, Terry Fuller of Poplar Grove in Phillips County Greg Hay of Conway, Otis Howe of Little Rock, Larry Jayroe of Forrest City, Thomas Post of Altus in Franklin County and Denny Stokes of Earle.
The six who voted against it were Bruce Alford of Lewisville, Kyle Baltz of Pocahontas, Marty Eaton of Jonesboro, Jerry Hyde of Paragould, Jammy Turner of Gillett in Arkansas County and Barry Walls of Harrisburg.
The move for tighter restrictions was supported by the eight members who had voted for a ban, along with Alford, Eaton and Hyde.
Robert Campbell of Witts Springs in Searcy County was absent.
All 14 members eligible to vote supported a motion declaring a situation “of imminent peril to public safety, health or welfare.”