Meeting idea for dicamba rejected

Panelist sought rules clarification

The state Plant Board declined a member’s effort Tuesday to have the panel hold a special meeting to clarify some of its latest regulations on the use of dicamba this year.

The new regulations, which took effect Monday, were adopted Feb. 20 after a public hearing and specially called board meeting criticized by some as chaotic.

Terry Fuller, who represents the Arkansas Seed Growers Association on the Plant Board, said the board approved new regulations that contradicted the proposed rule, which had attracted some 2,600 written comments and public testimony from about 70 people at the nine-hour hearing. About 200 others attended the hearing.

Most of those writers and speakers opposed expanding the use of dicamba, and Fuller said Tuesday that the board ignored their concerns and the views of state weed scientists who cite dicamba’s ability to move off target.

The board last year set an April 16 ban on using the herbicide across the top of dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton after receiving about 1,000 complaints in 2017 alleging dicamba damage to other crops, fruits,

vegetables and vegetation susceptible to the herbicide.

The public hearing was based on a proposal to ban dicamba’s in-crop use after May 20, but immediately after public testimony concluded, board member Marty Eaton of Jonesboro made a motion to move the cutoff date to May 31. That motion set off a back-and-forth debate among board members, with a series of other attempted amendments and procedural votes over the course of about four hours.

The board eventually settled on a May 25 cutoff with other restrictions, including various buffers between dicamba-sprayed fields and crops susceptible to the herbicide.

A 1-mile buffer for “certified organic” crops wasn’t part of the public-hearing notice and was a major change from the proposal that prompted the hearing, Fuller said. The original proposal gave protection to organic crops, not just those that are certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as free of chemicals.

The amendment, Fuller said, takes away any dicamba

protection for growers yet to complete the three-year process to gain the USDA’s “certified organic” label. Even a light hit of dicamba on those fields would force a farmer to start over, losing potentially tens of thousands of dollars, Fuller said.

Fuller, who had tried to raise parliamentary procedure concerns during the course of the board’s Feb. 20 discussion, called the new regulations “bad, broken and legally wrong.”

“If we can’t decide where we’re at, do we just leave it to the courts?” Fuller asked, referring to possible legal challenges to how the board handled the Feb. 20 debate and vote. “If we don’t leave it defined, we’re in a huge mess.”

Some board members questioned how any clarification could do any good, since the new rules have taken effect.

The Arkansas Agriculture Department, the umbrella agency for the Plant Board, is preparing a list of questions and answers to post on its website as a potential aid to farmers and others, Butch Calhoun, director of the Plant Board, said.

The board voted 13-2 to reject Fuller’s motion to hold a special meeting. Fuller was

joined only by Bruce Alford of Lewisville.

A bill clarifying how the board can levy fines of up to $25,000 for “egregious” violations of Arkansas law on the use of dicamba was signed into law on Monday.

House Bill 1512 is now Act 423. It took effect immediately upon Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s signature.

HB1512, by Rep. David Hillman, R-Almyra, was approved 90-0 in the House and 35-0 in the Senate.

Current law allows the Plant Board to levy fines of up to $25,000 for “egregious” violations of herbicide law only “when significant off-target crop damage occurred.” The board hasn’t levied such a fine in the nearly two years the law has been in effect because the source of secondary off-target movement of dicamba is almost impossible to trace. The previous maximum fine was $1,000.

Act 423 removes the “significant off-target crop damage” language. An “egregious” violation would be an intentional violation of federal or state regulations, such as spraying dicamba past the May 25 cutoff date set recently by the Plant Board. Sens. David Wallace, R-Leachville, and Blake Johnson, R-Corning, were co-sponsors.