No shift for 2020 dicamba season

Plant Board opts against changes

The state Plant Board on Tuesday adopted a May 25 cutoff on the in-crop use of dicamba next year, rejecting a ban of the herbicide as well as an extension of its use.

The 14-1 vote now moves the issue to Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who’ll decide whether to allow it to go to a public-comment period and, likely, to a public hearing.

Russell Black of Fayetteville, who represents the Arkansas horticulture industry, voted against the cutoff date, saying it doesn’t protect growers of crops not tolerant of dicamba, backyard gardeners and homeowners whose trees and shrubs are susceptible to the herbicide.

Black likened supporters of extending dicamba’s in-crop use, including Plant Board members, to a “bulldozer” that runs over farmers “who want, and have the right, to plant other crops or want to plant a tomato garden.”

This year’s cutoff date also was May 25, but still the state has received 208 complaints of dicamba damage, with many of those still under investigation.

The board’s pesticide committee had recommended in a 4-1 vote last week to allow farmers to

use the herbicide through May 31.

“I can’t vote for an extension,” Jerry Hyde of Paragould, who represents the Arkansas Pest Management Association, said.

The use of dicamba from April 16 to May 25 applies only to four approved dicamba formulations — Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia, Syngenta’s Tavium and DowDuPont’s FeXapan — because they were designed to be less volatile and less prone to offtarget movement.

Farmers say dicamba is vital to their fight against yield-sapping weeds that have grown resistant to Roundup, or glyphosate, and other herbicides. Most problems, they say, are from farmers not following regulations on spraying, such as wind direction and speed.

The board’s vote also retains the buffers in this year’s regulations, including a 1-mile buffer, in all directions, for research stations operated by universities and the government. The pesticide committee had recommended extending that buffer to 2 miles.

“That makes it sound like we’re more concerned about [research] than everybody else,” Hyde said.

Representatives of the University of Arkansas system’s Division of Agriculture who attended the meeting, including its vice president for agriculture, Mark Cochran, said the university didn’t ask for an extension of the buffer. UA scientists reported dicamba damage at university plots this year in Mississippi, Phillips and Desha counties.

A 1-mile buffer, in all directions, to certified organic farms and commercially grown specialty crops — defined as more than 1,000 plants or average annual sales of more than $25,000 — also will be retained under the board’s new plan, as will a half-mile buffer to soybeans and cotton not tolerant of dicamba.

Matthew Marsh, a Plant Board member who farms in Lonoke County, said this is the first year for the Plant Board to really levy fines of up to $25,000 for “egregious” violations of state pesticide regulations. Previous law, by lacking an emergency clause and carrying other caveats, hindered the board’s ability to levy such fines and to discourage illegal use, Marsh and other board members said.

The board is set to hold several hearings this year to address specific cases that could be considered egregious violations, with the first ones scheduled for Oct. 23 and Oct. 24.

Stiffer fines, coupled with the willingness of manufacturers of dicamba-tolerant seed to pull licensing agreements from farmers who knowingly violate pesticide regulations, will be the only way some farmers will abide by the law, some board members said.

The board gave a representative of Audubon Arkansas about 15 minutes to show results of its 3-month project to track dicamba damage on public lands, primarily in eastern Arkansas. Volunteers with the conservation group collected evidence of dicamba damage from 243 sites in 17 counties, according to its report released Sept. 5.

The board, according to its mission statement, has an obligation to protect all Arkansas residents, said Dan Scheiman, the group’s bird conservation director.

If the governor sends the board’s recommendation to public comment, a public hearing will depend on the response during that 30-day comment period, said Wade Hodge, the attorney for the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, the Plant Board’s umbrella agency.

Twenty-five public comments, or comments from a group with more than 25 members, will trigger the hearing, Hodge said.

The Plant Board received some 2,600 comments last winter when it was considering this year’s rules.