News
Fordyce says ‘still work to be done’ in Missouri dicamba complaints
Missouri Director of Agriculture Richard Fordyce tells Brownfield Ag News there’s still work to be done in the investigation of dicamba drift damage in southeastern Missouri. Fordyce says the Missouri Department of Agriculture has finished its field work, including sampling and interviewing, and now has to catalog and file results.
“At the end of this process, we will have determined if there was in fact drift or volatilization, and what was the target and what was damaged,” Fordyce told Brownfield Ag News Monday.
A Missouri lawmaker said he’d heard the FBI was investigating, but Fordyce says he’s not aware whether that agency is involved. At the federal level, Fordyce says, however, that the investigation is now in the hands of the EPA’s criminal division.
“These folks are law enforcement-type people,” said Fordyce. “They’re not necessarily regulators, they are folks that do criminal investigation, so those are the folks that are down there at this point.”
Growers used old dicamba formulations in an unapproved manner on cotton plants bred to tolerate the herbicide. The weed killer drifted onto vulnerable crops causing damage. The new Monsanto dicamba formulation that resists drifting just recently received EPA clearance.
“With the approval of the XtendiMax, that has the VaporGrip technology, that will allow our producers to utilize this new technology,” he said, “and do it in a safe and responsible manner.”
The Missouri Department of Agriculture received 124 complaints of dicamba injury in several southeastern counties.
I’d advise you to be skeptical of statements that come from Monsanto based on their self-interest in an issue that is probably worth 100’s of millions of dollars to them. There are a few points you should be aware of:
1. The VaporGrip technology referred to by Monsanto has not undergone the type of independent testing that would provide confidence in its effectiveness. Monsanto is relying on its own testing only, which is why Arkansas has proposed a two year ban until testing occurs. If their VaporGrip technology is so good, wouldn’t you think they’d love to get independent testing done instead of preventing it?
2. In Canada, there were 8 cases involving the movement of Monsanto’s dicamba with VaporGrip, which occurred this past July alone.
3. Mistakes made by farmers by mixing Monsanto’s new dicamba product will destroy the VaporGrip effectiveness, allowing that dicamba to drift, which will lead to additional damage.
4. An issue that applies to dicamba that doesn’t apply to most other chemical sprays used on crops is that a farmer can apply dicamba correctly and the dicamba can still drift to destroy crops within a great distance. It’s not like most chemicals that cause damage due to negligence by an applicator, which allows the damaged party to recover his losses due to that negligence. It may be hard to recover damages when the applicator did everything correctly and the dicamba still drifted.