The EPA says farmers can keep using weedkiller blamed for vast crop damage

[sandensea]

Source: NPR

For months, farmers from Mississippi to Minnesota have been waiting for the Environmental Protection Agency to make up its mind about a controversial weedkiller called dicamba.

Some farmers love the chemical; other farmers, along with some environmentalists, consider it a menace, because it's prone to drifting in the wind, damaging nearby crops and wild vegetation.

This week, on Halloween evening, the EPA finally announced its decision. Calling dicamba "a valuable pest control tool," it gave farmers a green light to keep spraying the chemical on new varieties of soybeans and cotton that have been genetically modified to tolerate dicamba.

A coalition of environmental groups that had filed a lawsuit against the EPA's original approval of dicamba blasted the decision to keep it on the market. Paul Achitoff from Earthjustice said in a statement that "EPA's disregard of both the law and the welfare of ... species at risk of extinction is unconscionable."

Read more: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/11/01/662918255/the-epa-says-farmers-can-keep-using-weedkiller-blamed-for-vast-crop-damage

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Arkansas farmer David Wildy inspects a field of soybeans damaged by dicamba in 2017.

[pansypoo53219]

1. of corporations, by corporations, FOR corporations.

[Judi Lynn]

2. This was written only last August:

Top Seed Companies Urge EPA to Limit Dicamba
Two of the nation's largest independent seed sellers, Beck's Hybrids and Stine Seed, are urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to place limits on the spraying of the drift-prone pesticide dicamba, Reuters reported.

This could potentially hurt Monsanto, which along with DowDupont and BASF SE, makes dicamba formulations to use on Monsanto's Xtend seeds that are genetically engineered to resist applications of the weedkiller. Beck's Hybrids and Stine Seed, as well as other companies, sell those seeds.

The push from the two companies comes after a University of Missouri report in July that estimated 1.1 million acres of non-resistant soybeans have been accidentally damaged by dicamba this year so far. Off-target damage has also been reported on other agricultural crops, trees and plants. In 2017, the highly volatile chemical damaged a reported 3.6 million acres of crops, according to the University of Missouri.

Crop injuries have surfaced despite efforts from the EPA and many states that have introduced restrictions to prevent off-target dicamba damage.

"I've been doing this for 50 years and we've never had anything be as damaging as this dicamba situation," Stine Seed founder and CEO Harry Stine told Reuters. "In this case, Monsanto made an error."

More:
https://www.ecowatch.com/dicamba-seed-companies-monsanto-2596677773.html

Very dark times for life on earth. Let's hope something survives until the Republicans are gone.

Thanks for information we need to know, sandensea We need to plan to put things right again A.S.A.P., if possible.

[sandensea]

4. You're welcome, Judi.

As you know, that's all we can expect from these gangsters in power at the moment. Lots of Swiss bank account deposits in their name from Monsatan, as well.

[justhanginon]

3. Renamed Environmental Pollution Agency. Hopefully a temporary

condition. If there is anything left to regulate when these corporate greed merchants that have purchased our government are finished, frankly, I will be surprised. It certainly won't be fixed in my lifetime.

[riversedge]

5. OMG!! This is unreal.

[sandensea]

6. I used to think of warnings that Monsatan was killing agriculture to monopolize food, outlandish

Now, I'm not so sure.

[Bengus81]

7. Trump can say at his NAZI rallys how tree hugger Liburals wanted it gone but it's not

and how him and Republicans won't let Liburals destroy the farm community.

[sandensea]

8. That's why Monsatan loves him

They want to be the world's supermarket - to the exclusion of anyone else.

The GOPee - and Cheeto especially - is a natural fit for anyone with Bond villain-size ambitions like those.