Herbicide ban hits farmers
Seeds already bought, say some growers in state’s west
For west Arkansas farmers, the plight of the American burying beetle may make or break this year’s soybean and corn yields.
In January, the Environmental Protection Agency banned two popular herbicides in 11 Arkansas counties, citing concerns for plants and animals listed in the Endangered Species Act.
The decision has sent some farmers scrambling to find alternatives as they prepare for the upcoming planting season.
The herbicides, Enlist One and Enlist Duo, are commonly used to combat pigweed, a scourge of many farmers. But the EPA cited concerns with several species listed under the Endangered Species Act, including the American burying beetle.
While the EPA renewed its approval for the herbicides in much of the country for another seven years, farmers in Crawford, Franklin, Johnson, Little River, Logan, Montgomery, Polk, Scott, Sebastian, Sevier and Yell counties will have to make do without it.
Many farmers took issue with the timing of the decision from the EPA as they had already bought their seeds and herbicides for the coming growing season.
“It kind of came out of left field, to be honest,” said Matthew Crabtree, chief executive officer of the Farmers
Cooperative Association.
The Arkansas Farm Bureau wrote a letter to the EPA and Arkansas’ congressional delegation asking the agency to delay its decision by another year to give farmers more time to prepare.
Steve Eddington, a spokesman for the Farm Bureau, said the main issue is the timing.
“Look, the margins in farming are thin enough as it is, so anytime you have unneeded or redundant costs, it makes it that more of a challenge,” Eddington said.
Enlist One and Enlist Duo are popular herbicides made by Corteva Agriscience intended to be paired with soybean, corn or cotton seeds that have been genetically modified to be resistant to it.
In west Arkansas, corn and soybeans are key crops, and the EPA’s decision to ban Enlist One and Enlist Duo has farmers changing plans, which could mean changing what crop they grow this season, Crabtree said.
Western Arkansas soybean and corn farmers prepare for the next year’s growing season long in advance, with planting taking place in May and planning beginning in the fall.
While farmers in the 11 Arkansas counties can still use their Enlist seeds, they will have to find a new herbicide — a sometimes difficult task. Farmers can opt to use Roundup, to which pigweed
has resistance, or Liberty, which is in short supply and has increased in price.
Enlist One and Enlist Duo are the only herbicides approved for overtop use for a 2,4-D weed-killer.
“Most of those seed decisions were made last fall and now you turn around in the spring and eliminate all herbicide options. It puts a lot of guys in a tough situation there,” said Tommy Butts, an extension weed scientist at the University of Arkansas.
Butts estimated that pigweed, if uncontrolled, could cause an 80% to 90% yield loss for soybean.
Jesse Taylor, an extension agent at the University of Arkansas’ Extension office in Franklin County, said that, while the timing of the EPA’s decision is “last minute,” farmers can make do with the change.
“It gives them a little bit of time to plan, but it’s right at the last minute because a lot of them would already be looking to book their seeds for planting season,” Taylor said.
A spokesperson for the EPA did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
The American burying beetles is just one of more than 300 species the EPA listed that could be hurt directly or indirectly by the herbicides, according to public documents from the agency.
The beetle, which used to be commonly found in the U.S. west of the Rocky Mountains, has become the subject of political fights between oil and gas lobbyists and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
In September 2020, the Fish and Wildlife Service down-listed the American burying beetle from endangered to threatened. The beetle, which plays a key ecological role by recycling animal carcasses and keeping flies away, is still found in Oklahoma and western Arkansas.
When Enlist One and Enlist Duo came up for regulatory review, the EPA applied a stricter view of the Endangered Species Act when deciding whether to give the herbicide its approval.
Amy Smith, an environmental consultant with Apex Companies, LLC and an ecologist who has spent 17-years studying the American burying beetle, said there is a large population of the beetle at Fort Chaffee.
Smith said the beetle’s plight is the result of a loss of available animal carcasses in which the beetles burrow and lay eggs.
Not having read up on the EPA decision, Smith said she couldn’t comment on the update to the regulation on the herbicide, but said the species is likely tapped for extinction in the future.
Smith appealed to a sense of patriotism to emphasize the beetle’s importance to the ecosystem, noting the beetle’s name has “American” in it for a reason.
“There are other species that do similar jobs, but this one is the biggest and the best,” Smith said.
Contention over herbicides is nothing new to Arkansas with debates over the use of dicamba splitting many farmers. The herbicide, sprayed on genetically-modified soybean crops, is volatile when applied improperly, causing significant damage to less-resistant plants nearby.
Farmers, agriculture business interests and others have waged numerous fights in recent years over the proper way to regulate dicamba.