Some Arkansas farmers, in their fight against pigweed, have been illegally spraying a herbicide that harms their neighbors' fields when it drifts, affecting thousands of acres of cotton and soybeans, several officials said Monday.
The state Plant Board, a division of the state Agriculture Department, has received about two dozen such complaints, Susie Nichols, manager of the Plant Board's Pesticide Division, said. Nichols said the number of incidents, however, is much higher.
"They're friends and neighbors and their kids go to school together, so rather than filing a formal complaint, they just want to tell us about it and then work it out among themselves," Nichols said. A potential fine of $1,000 per application didn't stop anyone, she said.
Most of the affected crops are in Northeast Arkansas. Crops in the Missouri Bootheel and in western Tennessee also have been damaged, according to farm-related media in those states.
The herbicide is dicamba. M̶a̶d̶e̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶M̶o̶n̶s̶a̶n̶t̶o̶,̶ ̶i̶t̶ It* can be an effective tool against pigweed, an invasive plant that has become resistant to almost everything else that farmers have thrown at it. Pigweed has especially been a problem for farmers this year.
That resistance eventually could pose a threat to the soybean industry in Arkansas, Tom Barber, a weed specialist with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, said Monday. Arkansas ranks 10th in the nation in soybean production, with about 3 million acres planted each year.
Barber put potential yield losses at 10 to 15 percent because of the illegal spraying.
Nichols, Barber and others said the farmers who sprayed illegally likely felt they had just one other option: plow up the crops.
Some months ago, Barber warned of a likely "train wreck" involving soybean farmers and regulators because of several complicated, and complicating, factors.
One factor, he said, was that while dicamba is effective against pigweed, it hadn't been approved at all by the Environmental Protection Agency to be sprayed on cotton or soybeans because most varieties of cotton and soybeans are not tolerant of the herbicide. Dicamba also could easily spread to adjacent fields, endangering them as well, the EPA has said.
Meanwhile, scientists for Monsanto had developed soybean and cotton crops that are dicamba-tolerant -- called Xtend -- but farmers held off planting those crops because China, a major importer of Arkansas soybeans, hadn't decided until this spring whether to accept dicamba-tolerant beans.
With that market suddenly open, Arkansas growers planted thousands of acres of dicamba-resistant soybeans and cotton but still didn't have EPA-approved dicamba. As the pigweed invasion progressed, some turned to the herbicide anyway, Barber said. Growers with dicamba-tolerant crops then sprayed, and it drifted to neighboring fields that weren't dicamba-tolerant.
"I don't think all the [Xtend] growers are spraying dicamba," Barber said. "I think some of them are doing it right."
A farmer who planted an Xtend crop and who now has pigweed faces a choice. "Dicamba is the only option [for spraying], and it's an illegal one," Barber said. "Either spray it illegally or disc it up."
Nichols, of the state Plant Board, said she expects an overflow crowd for the board's next meeting on Monday. The board will discuss increasing fines for illegal spraying to $10,000. The current fine of $1,000 was "of no consequence," she said.
Business on 07/19/2016
*CORRECTION: Monsanto does not make the dicamba herbicide that has recently been sprayed illegally on some cotton and soybean fields in Arkansas. This story incorrectly identified the producer of the chemical.