Dicamba use in '20 on board agenda

In what is now an annual ritual, the state Plant Board will take another step today in deciding how dicamba can be used on certain Arkansas crops next year.

The board's pesticide committee last week recommended allowing the herbicide's in-crop use through May 31 -- five days longer than what was allowed this year. The meeting is set for 9:30 a.m. at the board's headquarters in west Little Rock.

Farmers faced a May 26 ban this year, yet the Plant Board has received more than 200 complaints of damage, many of them filed deep into the summer, leading officials to believe dicamba has been sprayed illegally.

Work this year by Audubon Arkansas and a lawsuit filed in late June illustrate warnings made over the past three years that dicamba damage would drive a wedge between the farming community and those not directly involved in agriculture. Some farmers and others have warned that alleged dicamba misuse and damage could create such a division.

David Wildy, a Mississippi County farmer who served on a dicamba task force in August 2017, said then that the farming community was giving itself a "black eye" by using a product that is harming trees and gardens well away from crops and fields. In later testimony before legislators, Wildy called the use of dicamba "the most divisive issue I have seen in my 43 years of farming."

In June, a couple filed a lawsuit in Mississippi County Circuit Court in Osceola, alleging that illegal spraying of dicamba in May 2017 killed or damaged more than 100 trees on their 1.4-acre homestead a few miles south of Manila. They alleged damage of more than $150,000 to replace trees.

And this summer, from June 1 to Aug. 25, staff members and volunteers with Audubon Arkansas trekked across eastern Arkansas to look for possible dicamba damage on public lands or on private property where they had obtained permission to explore.

The conservation group issued a report Sept. 5, saying it had collected records showing probable or possible damage on 243 sites in 17 counties. Thirteen other records showed signs of damage from non-dicamba herbicides. About 90 records had insufficient information or photo quality to determine the possible cause of damage.

Records were collected from four university research farms, 15 cemeteries, nine churchyards, seven Arkansas Game and Fish Commission properties, two state natural areas, three city parks, one state park, public facilities near Helena-West Helena and Brinkley, and along county and state roads, the group said. The information has been sent to the Plant Board.

Such sites "are largely out of the purview of the Plant Board, despite being directly affected by their decisions," Audubon Arkansas wrote. "There is no requirement for the Plant Board to consult with state conservation agencies on the use of herbicides that impact the lands they manage. There is no compensation for the private land owner who loses trees or gardens to repeated herbicide exposure."

In Mississippi County, Charles and Vicki Mobley claim that Costner and Sons' farming operation disregarded state regulations when dicamba was applied to fields adjacent to the Mobley property.

The Mobleys said they witnessed the spraying on May 22, 2017, with equipment set up "within just feet" of their property line.

"... the Mobleys began to notice that the leaves on certain trees in their yard were curling up and that the trees appeared to be distressed," they said in their lawsuit. "The pine tree needles were falling off the pine trees. Shrubs and bushes appeared distressed, and the vegetable garden appeared to be dying."

Costner and Sons Farms, in its responses to the lawsuit, generally denied responsibility or said it lacked the information to deny or acknowledge the Mobleys' claims.

In 2017, the Plant Board at first allowed in-crop use of dicamba throughout the growing season but, when confronted with more than 200 complaints of possible damage to crops and vegetation not tolerant of the herbicide, it approved a midsummer emergency ban. Complaints that year ultimately topped 1,000, including one filed by the Mobleys.

While the spraying date cited in the lawsuit was within Plant Board regulations at the time, the board in June 2018 issued three warning letters to Costner and Sons -- for spraying while wind speeds were too high, for violating buffer requirements between the spraying area and crops or vegetation susceptible to the herbicide, and for failing to keep the records required for a dicamba application. Warning letters are the lowest penalties issued by the board, and generally are levied when the farmer or applicator had no violations in the previous three years.

A date for a hearing in the Mobleys' lawsuit hasn't been set.

Last fall, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, while being aware of thousands of complaints of dicamba damage in Arkansas and other states in 2017 and 2018, said it would allow in-crop usage of new dicamba formulations through the 2020 growing season.

"Agriculture in general is facing unprecedented scrutiny about all applications and having a 'bad actor' out there like dicamba is going to do nothing but inflame the public sentiment about crop protectant material to an even greater degree when the consuming public and rural residents start to realize and understand why trees and landscapes are being injured," said Steve Smith, chairman of Save Our Crops coalition and a critic of dicamba's use.

Along with the suggested May 31 cutoff date, the Plant Board will consider other committee recommendations, including a 2-mile buffer in all directions from fields where dicamba is applied and fields operated by university and federal research stations. There was a 1-mile buffer for those facilities this year.

The committee also recommended retention of a 1-mile buffer, in all directions, to certified organic crops and commercially grown specialty crops. The committee also recommended keeping a half-mile buffer for soybeans and cotton not tolerant of the herbicide.

Any substantive changes to this year's regulations by the Plant Board, whether adopted in today's meeting or later, will have to be put up for public comment for 30 days, a public hearing, approval by the governor and a review by legislators.

Business on 09/17/2019

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