Plant Board trying again on dicamba
Hundreds expected when LR ballroom hosts hearing
Dicamba’s immediate future in Arkansas will be decided Wednesday in the ballroom of a Little Rock hotel, far from the fields and crops helped — and hindered — by the herbicide.
For the second time in a little more than two years, the state Plant Board has rented out an Embassy Suites hotel ballroom, with seating for about 500, for a public hearing on an issue that has divided farmers for three years and attracted more attention this year from people not directly involved in agriculture.
About 300 people attended the first hearing there, in November 2017.
The Plant Board has recommended allowing farmers to use dicamba on dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybeans through May 20. Farmers last year had an April 15 cutoff, early enough in the spring to effectively render in-crop dicamba useless against weeds that threaten their yields. It was the only such ban among some three dozen soybean-producing states.
Opinions, garnered through a 30-day period for public comment, can be broken down into three camps:
■ Farmers who plant dicamba-tolerant crops would accept the May 20 date but would rather be allowed to spray at least until mid-June, as a group of farmers requested in a formal petition to the board late last year.
■ Farmers who reject May and June cutoff dates, preferring to spray throughout the growing season, as allowed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency in its decision in late October to re-register new dicamba formulations by BASF, DowDuPont and Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer.
■ Farmers who plant crops and produce that aren’t dicamba tolerant seek to retain the April 15 cutoff. They are joined by beekeepers who say dicamba is damaging vegetation crucial to pollination and by backyard gardeners and homeowners who say their produce, trees and shrubs far from dicamba-sprayed fields have been damaged by off-target movement of the herbicide.
The board received some 2,600 comments during the comment period that ended Feb. 5. Most favor a cutoff earlier than May 20, according to a counting by the Arkansas Agriculture Department, the umbrella agency for the Plant Board.
Complaints of dicamba damage have rocked rowcrop agriculture, with more than 1,000 filed in 2017 and some 200 last season, even with an early cutoff. Other states face similar complaints.
Audubon Arkansas, a conservation group, and the Freedom to Farm Foundation, a group primarily of farmers who don’t want to plant the dicamba-tolerant crops, have been active in getting their supporters to write the Plant Board and
encouraging them to attend the hearing. A group called FarmVoice, which seeks more time for spraying the herbicide, has been active in its cause as well, through social media.
A majority vote of the Plant Board pushed the May 20 recommendation as a way to give farmers at least one opportunity to spray dicamba in summertime heat in a battle against pigweed now resistant to other herbicides. However, dicamba’s detractors, including weed scientists in Arkansas and other states, say the chemical’s ability to “volatilize” as a vapor or gas hours or days after application and move off target is increased in times of high temperatures and humidity.
The composition of the board — with seven of its 16 voting members appointed by the governor and nine members selected by various agriculture industries — has changed considerably since it voted 10-3 in November 2017 to set last year’s April 15 cutoff.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson chose last summer not to reappoint two members, Danny Finch of Jonesboro and Larry Jayroe of Forrest City, who were critics of dicamba’s use and consistently voted in 2016 and 2017 against loosening any restrictions.
Their replacements, Sam Stuckey of Clarkedale in Crittenden County and John Fricke of Pine Bluff, voted in November and December in favor of letting dicamba be sprayed deeper into the season.
The board’s newest member is Brad Koen of DeWitt, a regional manager for BASF who was elected to the board in January by the Arkansas Crop Protection Association, replacing Otis Howe, a DowDuPont executive who had been the board’s chairman. Koen said Thursday that he will participate in Wednesday’s discussion but “will always recuse when a vote is involving BASF products.” The public hearing will be Koen’s first Plant Board activity as a member.
The board voted on 11-4 Nov. 5 for a June 15 cutoff. After more study, it voted 10-5 on Dec. 6 for the May 20 cutoff, along with other restrictions, including a 1-mile buffer in all directions from crops not tolerant of the herbicide, organic and specialty crops, and from state and federal research stations. It also voted to prohibit tank-mixing glyphosate with dicamba, based on a weed scientist’s testimony that such a mix makes dicamba more volatile.
Eight members have supported both cutoff dates. Passage of a new regulation requires nine votes.
The board’s new chairman is Greg Hay of Conway, who as a regular member of the board voted for this year’s proposed May 20 cutoff but against the June 15 date. The board’s chairman typically doesn’t vote unless it’s to break a tie.
Also new is Mark Morgan, a Johnson County peach grower and 2017 Arkansas Farmer of the Year who was elected to the board by the Arkansas Horticulture Society. Morgan voted for the May 20 cutoff in December, his first meeting as a member.
Speakers at the public hearing will be given five minutes. If a second day is needed, the hearing will be moved to the headquarters of the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service on south University Avenue in Little Rock.
The hearing, along with the 30-day comment period, is required by Arkansas law for most state agencies, boards and commissions looking to change their rules and regulations.
Any change decided by the Plant Board will go to the Joint Budget Committee’s rules and regulations review subcommittee on Feb. 25, to the Joint Budget Committee the next day, and then to the governor. If the board can’t decide on a new regulation, the current April 15 cutoff remains in effect.
The public comments can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/ yy164ydj