News
Arkansas farmers sign petition opposing dicamba cut-off
More than 300 Arkansas farmers have signed a petition in opposition to a proposed April 15th cutoff date for dicamba application next year in Arkansas.
Attorney Grant Ballard with ArkAg LLC represents some of those growers and tells Brownfield Ag News, “I think that my clients and a lot of producers in Arkansas are a little bit skeptical of the rush to judgment on the dicamba herbicide issue.”
Ballard says his clients have also submitted an open letter to the Arkansas Plant Board, “Which has some suggestions for potential ways that dicamba use could be regulated to avoid unintended injury while still allowing producers to use dicamba herbicides in certain instances.”
The recommendation of the Arkansas Dicamba Task Force for that cut-off date – Ballard says, is not totally representative of growers who are benefitting from the weed-control technology and need to use it next year. He says some of the growers who have signed the petition experienced dicamba damage from drift this season. He says none of the growers want to hurt their neighbors but they want to have the best technologies.
AUDIO: Interview with Grant Ballard:
Maybe none of the signing growers “want” to hurt their neighbors, but if they use the product, there is a percentage of the time it’s going to happen, the product is uncontrollable. I don’t know of any drunk drivers who set out to intentionally hurt anyone, but if you drink and drive, the odds are greater that you will cause injury to an innocent party. This is no different. It is known to be a problem but “what the heck, it helps me”. A little collateral damage to an innocent person doesn’t seem to bad if I kill my weeds.