Soybeans are very sensitive to dicamba and this summer is showing it. Damage complaints have been filed in several Southern states because of what appears to be off-target movement of dicamba herbicide onto sensitive crops.
The damage is also being connected with applications made in herbicide-tolerant crops that do not yet have a federally approved dicamba herbicide labeled for in-crop use. The situation could hold legal implications for errant applicators and bring additional regulatory scrutiny to a technology many farmers have been asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to sanction. Seed companies repeatedly issued warnings that there would be no approved dicamba product available for use on the trait this growing season after EPA failed to label the product in May. However, dicamba herbicides are readily available in the marketplace. Growers that applied those herbicides are not only in violation of federal and state law, but the herbicide formulations currently available tend to be volatile and more likely to move off-target under summer conditions, according to university weed Extension specialists contacted by DTN.
"It looks like a bomb went off in some parts of the South," said Ford Baldwin, an independent weed consultant based in Arkansas. "Some growers returned dicamba soybeans when they learned the beans did not yet have clearance in the European Union (EU) and dicamba applications would not be legal. It's a good thing, otherwise we might have been facing Armageddon." The EPA told DTN it "is aware of reports of illegal use of dicamba having caused damage to neighboring crops. We are working with state and other federal agencies to investigate these incidents."