Shawn Peeble's 1,500 acres of certified-organic vegetables and Raymond Chung's edamame fields are threatened by the continued use of dicamba, both men said recently of the herbicide.
And Richard Coy of Jonesboro, whose family runs the state's largest commercial bee operation, said dicamba could be harming flowering plants essential to bees' ability to pollinate.
Meanwhile, thousands of U.S. farmers who have planted millions of acres of soybeans and cotton genetically modified to be tolerant of dicamba say they must have the herbicide to combat pigweed, marestail, waterhemp and other weeds that have grown resistant to other weedkillers.
Monsanto developed the dicamba-tolerant crops, while BASF's Engenia was the only dicamba herbicide legal this year for in-crop use in Arkansas.
A flood of dicamba-related complaints -- 924 as of late last week -- prompted the state on July 11 to ban the sale and use of all formulations of dicamba for 120 days. Most of the complaints are of damage to soybeans. Other complaints have centered on damage to vegetable gardens, specialty crops, and shrubs and trees not dicamba tolerant.
A state task force will meet again Thursday in Morrilton to discuss how, or if, dicamba should be used in Arkansas next year. Any recommendations will go to the state Plant Board, the governor and lawmakers.
This deep into the season there's little spraying being done on farms. But Peebles, Coy and Chung said they're worried about the future of organic and other specialty crops in the state.
Peebles, of Augusta in Woodruff County, said dicamba damage to a neighbor's soybean field got to within 20 feet of part of his 1,500 acres of organic sweet potatoes, edamame, pumpkins and green beans in White, Prairie and Woodruff counties.
"If I had gotten any damage at all, I would have had 24 hours to inform the USDA [U.S. Department of Agriculture]," Peebles said. "And, depending on the amount of damage and USDA whims, they could remove my organic certification for three years."
Coy, whose Coy Bee Co. has 13,000 beehives in Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and California, declined to say whether he wants dicamba banned but asked the task force, in its debut meeting last week, to consider a 2015 study in Pennsylvania into how the herbicide stunted flowering plants.
"Dicamba isn't killing my bees, I want to be clear on that," Coy said later by telephone. But, he said, he can see better honey production and pollination in hives far from fields sprayed with dicamba than in hives closer to flowering plants and fields that have been sprayed.
Peebles, one of 19 members on the task force, said by telephone he has "input costs" -- or expenses -- of $3,500 to $4,000 an acre for his organic crops and produce. "We aim at clearing $6,000 to $7,000 an acre," Peebles said. "Losing certification for three years puts my losses at about $30 million."
While some soybean farmers may have yield loss, the beans they do produce can still be sent out for processing, mostly into meal for poultry and cattle, Chung said. But what Chung grows in north-central Arkansas and processes at the American Vegetable Soybean and Edamame Inc.'s plant in Mulberry in western Arkansas winds up on people's dinner plates across the nation.
"For us, [a damaged product] will be unusable," he said. "Our customers want a nice, beautiful pod, not a distorted, misshapen one."
Most of the edamame processed by Chung's company is cultivated in White County, far from the epicenter of alleged dicamba damage in counties along the Mississippi River.
"As far as I know this year, we've had no direct impact," said Chung, who introduced large-scale edamame production to Arkansas in 2012, the first such processing plant in the United States.
"We're not in the hot spot, geographically, but we are very worried about the future," he said. "If dicamba is as bad as we're hearing, and if it forces farmers to move into [dicamba-tolerant] crops just out of self-defense, I don't think we'll be able to plant in Arkansas anymore and there's no future for any other organic production."
The USDA's 2015 survey of organic farmers in Arkansas put their small but growing organic production at 32 certified farms across 2,015 acres, including pastureland, compared with 34 farms totaling 811 acres in 2014.
Sales of organic products in Arkansas in 2015 were $16.2 million in 2015. Financial figures for organic sales in the state in 2014 were withheld because larger producers could have been identified from such a small survey.
The USDA will update those numbers nationally on Sept. 20.
Certified organic farms must operate in compliance with the USDA's National Organic Program, which was started in October 2002. Certified organic farmers cannot use synthetic fertilizers, chemical pesticides, antibiotics, hormones or genetically modified organisms. Instead of depending on nonrenewable resources commonly used by conventional farmers, organic producers rely on ecologically based practices such as biological pest management.
Business on 08/23/2017