Panel affirms dicamba-cutoff rules

The state Plant Board’s recommendation to expand the use of dicamba this summer can proceed, a legislative subcommittee decided Monday in dismissing concerns over how the board reached that decision in a nine-hour public hearing last week.

The Plant Board has approved a May 25 cutoff for this year for application of the herbicide, along with requiring buffer zones between fields where dicamba is applied and fields with crops susceptible to the herbicide. The board’s recommendation now goes to the Joint Budget Committee as early as Thursday. Approval there sends the matter to the governor.

Later Monday, the House of Representatives voted 890 in favor of House Bill 1512 by Rep. David Hillman, R-Almyra, to streamline current law on how the Plant Board can levy fines of up to $25,000 for violating regulations on dicamba’s use.

Farmers last season faced an April 15 cutoff date on using the herbicide linked to crop damage, especially to soybeans, over the past two growing seasons. The board set that date as the best way to protect conventional crops, fruit trees, vegetable gardens, ornamentals and other vegetation susceptible to dicamba.

About 250 people attended the board’s public hearing last week, with about 80 people signing up to speak. Most of those spoke against relaxing the current regulations. The board also received about 2,600 public comments, with most of those in favor of retaining last year’s April 15 cutoff.

Dan Scheiman, the bird conservation director of Audubon Arkansas, told members of the Joint Bud-

get Committee’s rule and regulation review subcommittee that the board never discussed the original cutoff date that prompted such a public response, didn’t take public opposition into consideration and ignored state weed scientists.

After the board ended the public-comment period of its meeting, Marty Eaton, a Plant Board member from Jonesboro, made a motion to allow in-crop use of dicamba through May 31.

Members then debated various buffer zones aimed at protecting other crops, with members and Plant Board staff scribbling new numbers and distances into the margins of their copies of the original draft proposal.

Scheiman said the board violated Arkansas law that governs the operations of most state boards and commissions by voting on a proposal much different than the proposal that prompted the public hearing.

In a letter last week to Plant Board Director Butch Calhoun, Scheiman said he was “appalled and dismayed by the dysfunctional behavior of the Plant Board.”

“The ensuing confusion as the Board members and staff tried to make his motion clear was embarrassing,” Scheiman wrote. “I am not certain that all the members knew what they were voting on at the end after so many motions were made and voted on.”

The board ultimately voted 9-6 — with nine votes needed for passage — for the May 25 cutoff. During debate, Terry Fuller, a board member from Poplar Grove, warned that the board was violating law.

Other members noted that nothing, whether in science or in dicamba’s composition, has changed since the April 15 cutoff last year.

Cal McCastlain, a Little Rock attorney representing farmers and companies wanting stricter rules on dicamba, also told legislators that the board violated the state’s administrative procedure act. The filing of an injunction against the board’s decision is a possibility, he said.

Calhoun and Wade Hodge, the attorney for the Plant Board and Arkansas Agriculture Department, said the board followed state law in making its decision.

About 60 people, most of them connected to Audubon Arkansas, attended the review subcommittee’s meeting.

Several spoke against the May 25 cutoff, including a farmer who grows certifiedorganic vegetables and the owners of a farm-to-table restaurant, and said they wanted the April 15 cutoff to remain.

Sen. Jonathan Dismang, R-Searcy, noted the subcommittee’s only job was to consider whether the board abided by state and federal law in developing its new rules, not to weigh the pros and cons of dicamba.

Farmers who want to plant dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton say new formulations of dicamba are their only tool against pigweed now resistant to other herbicides and that they are especially needed during the summer as pigweed competes against their crops.

Other farmers say dicamba has damaged their vegetables, fruit trees and peanuts by lifting off sprayed plants hours or days after application and moving off target.

Backyard gardeners say their tomatoes have been ruined.

The state’s largest commercial beekeeper said this year that he’s moving his operations to southern Mississippi.

Along with the May 25 cutoff, the Plant Board set a mile buffer between dicamba-applied fields and university and federal research stations, certified organic crops and commercially grown specialty crops. It also set a half-mile downwind buffer to conventional soybeans and cotton.