The state Plant Board on Tuesday rejected efforts to set aside the state's current ban on in-crop use of dicamba and allow farmers to spray the herbicide deep into this month.
The ban on dicamba's in-crop use took effect May 26.
A wet spring, however, left farmers unable to plant thousands of acres of soybeans and cotton and, in many cases, kept them from spraying dicamba even before May 26 in their fight against pigweed, said Franklin Fogleman Jr., a Crittenden County farmer who asked for an extension through June 25.
The board, a division of the state Department of Agriculture, had set the May 26 ban as a sort of compromise for farmers who plant dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton and those who raise other crops susceptible to the herbicide.
The board has received some 1,500 complaints of damage to crops and other vegetation not tolerant of the herbicide since 2016.
This season's cutoff date might have worked in a "normal year," Fogleman told the board.
Persistent rainfall, few consecutive days without rain, a build-up of seep water well away from rivers and levees, and an increase in the seed bank of pigweed have made this year worse than last year, when farmers also had to deal with a wet spring, Fogleman told the board during a meeting conducted online.
Fogleman's presentation included a video of about 12 minutes showing farmers and their wet, unplanted fields.
The board voted 10-5 to deny Fogleman's petition. It defeated by similar margins a separate effort by some members to adopt an emergency rule to extend spraying into this month. Any change in current regulations would have required at least nine votes among the 16 members who have voting privileges.
In March, the board voted 11-3 against a petition that went the other way. Audubon Arkansas, the conservation group, had asked that the cutoff be moved to April 15.
The board, by law, is required to consider such petitions.
Both Fogleman's petition and the emergency rule, with the board's approval, would have required several other steps, including approval by the governor and a legislative committee.
Also Tuesday, the board approved without debate several penalties against farmers recommended last week by its pesticide committee. The slate of penalties included three dicamba-related cases, although none of the three involved "egregious" violations of Arkansas pesticide law, punishable by fines of up to $25,000.
Those cases involved:
• A $6,000 settlement offer accepted by William Carr of Hernando, Miss., for $1,000 each on three counts of illegally spraying dicamba past the 2018 cutoff and three record-keeping violations.
• A $5,000 fine against Jeff Todd of Clarkton, Mo., for illegally spraying dicamba and four other violations in 2018. Todd never responded to the settlement offer proposed by the Plant Board staff and accepted last week by the pesticide committee. Todd was fined $105,000 last year by the board for four egregious violations in 2018 but has appealed the case to Pulaski County Circuit Court.
• A $1,100 fine for Billy Tripp of Griffithville, for spraying during the 2018 in-crop dicamba ban and lacking spray records and a dicamba-training certificate required at the time. Tripp also didn't respond to the settlement offer.
Another $12,000 in fines were levied in 14 cases not related to dicamba.
Business on 06/03/2020