Plant Board panel urges swift use ban of all dicamba types

A subcommittee of the state Plant Board on Friday recommended an emergency ban on the sale and use of all dicamba herbicides on crops for the rest of the season.

The pesticide subcommittee voted 6-0 in favor of the ban, which will be presented to the full board at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Thousands of acres of crops, especially soybeans, have been damaged in recent weeks, apparently by dicamba, a herbicide widely used by farmers in their fight this season against pigweed. Some farmers have planted a dicamba-tolerant variety of cotton and soybeans. But many of their colleagues have other varieties of those crops that aren’t dicamba-tolerant. Damage also has been reported to fruits, vegetables and ornamentals across much of the state.

By 5 p.m. Friday, the Plant Board, a division of the state Department of Agriculture, had received 87 formal complaints, from 14 counties, describing dicamba damage.

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 itself off sprayed plants during warm, humid nights with no wind and spread to neighboring crops.

Plant Board inspectors have fanned out across eastern Arkansas to inspect damaged crops, Susie Nichols, director of the board’s pesticide division, said. It’s too early to tell whether an illegal formulation of dicamba has been used, or whether Engenia is damaging crops either through misapplication by farmers or despite their strict adherence to label requirements.

“This is difficult, this is complex,” Wes Ward, the state agriculture secretary, told the panel. “When you’re talking to Ph.D.’s [weed scientists], and they don’t have a good answer, you know it’s a difficult situation.”

The uncertainty led Danny Finch of Jonesboro, a member of the subcommittee and a farmer whose soybean fields in northeast Arkansas have received extensive damage, to move for the ban.

Referring to remarks earlier this week by Gov. Asa Hutchinson in which he called Plant Board members the “experts” on the matter, Finch said, “The governor has sent us a message to get something done, and I am ready to act now.”

Finch’s motion was to “stop the sale and use of all dicamba,” except on pastureland, as allowed now under state regulations.

After the vote, Hutchinson said in a statement that he is awaiting a full briefing about the field trip taken by Ward and others. “As for the emergency

rule, I would expect the Plant Board to spend a significant amount of energy and time on this matter and to continue its fact-finding mission in order to provide much needed guidance to our farmers,” he said.

BASF had several representatives at the meeting, at least one of whom sought to address the subcommittee before its vote. No public comments were allowed Friday, but opponents of the proposed ban and others with concerns will be able to voice their opinions at later meetings, Larry Jayroe of Forrest City, the subcommittee chairman, said.

A BASF representative later said the company was “closely monitoring” the situation and that its experts are available to farmers with

off-target complaints.

Monsanto, based in St. Louis, released the dicambatolerant cotton in 2015 and dicamba-tolerant soybeans last year but didn’t win federal approval for the accompanying herbicide until late last year. That herbicide, called Xtendimax, still isn’t legal in Arkansas because it hasn’t undergone studies in the state for its tendency to drift or volatilize.

“I hate to ban a technology or a chemistry” without answers to how crops and other commodities are being damaged, Marty Eaton, a Plant Board member, said. Farmers planted the new dicamba-tolerant seed technology in good faith, he said. “What happens now to those farmers?”

If the emergency ban is

approved, farmers with the Monsanto crops will have no legal herbicide for their fields. To get rid of the weeds, they’ll have to turn to hiring workers armed with hoes.

Ward and Plant Board Director Terry Walker were with several farm consultants and others who toured damaged fields earlier this week in eastern Arkansas, including the experimental farm operated by the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture. Some 100 acres of soybeans had to be disced up there because of taint.

Some farmers want to plant the new dicambatolerant seeds, Ward said, “while others want it as far away from them as possible. Is there a middle ground?”

Ward said the Plant Board has been “hamstrung” by the lack of an emergency clause in recent legislation to raise fines for “egregious” violations of pesticide and herbicide regulations from the current $1,000 to $25,000. The higher fines won’t take effect until August and can’t be applied retroactively to possible violations being reported now.

Ward said, however, officials consider revoking the licenses of herbicide and pesticide applicators who violate the law. “We’re hearing about some people who shouldn’t be even close to a spraying rig and maybe shouldn’t even be in agriculture at all,” he said. “I think there are people out there who don’t know what they’re doing. There are some people out there trying to do the right thing.”