farm sun combine

Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff said in a statement, “EPA’s disregard of both the law and the welfare of endangered whooping cranes, gray wolves, Indiana bats, and hundreds of other species at risk of extinction is unconscionable.

Photo: Pixabay

Public interest organizations representing farmers and conservationists are challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of Monsanto’s new “XtendiMax” pesticide.

XtendiMax is Monsanto’s version of dicamba, an old and highly drift-prone weed-killer.

EPA’s approval permitted XtendiMax to be sprayed for the first time on growing soybeans and cotton that Monsanto has genetically engineered to be resistant to dicamba.

The 2017 crop season — the first year of XtendiMax use — was an unprecedented disaster, according to the coalition of farmers and conservationists.

Just as critics warned would happen, dicamba sprayed on Monsanto’s GE soybeans and cotton formed vapor clouds that drifted to damage a host of crops and wild plants.

Over 3 million acres of soybeans, as well as scores of vegetable and fruit crops, trees and shrubs throughout the country were damaged by dicamba drift.

Flowering plants near cropland also suffered, with potential harms to pollinators, as well as hundreds of endangered animal and plant species.

Agronomists reported they had never seen herbicide-related drift damage on anything approaching this scale before. As the 2018 season approaches, experts predict similar widespread devastation. 

“The evidence shows that, rather than protecting farmers and the public interest, government officials rushed this pesticide to market without the rigorous analysis and data the law requires,” George Kimbrell, of the Center for Food Safety and counsel in the case, said in a news release. “There was good reason that decision had such devastating consequences last year: it was illegal.”

The papers filed in court tell the story of how EPA should have known this would occur, yet instead was pressured by Monsanto into approving the pesticide without any measures to prevent vapor drift.

The evidence in the case also shows that in late 2017, under pressure to take some action, EPA adopted revised instructions for use Monsanto proposed and approved — measures that agronomists believe will again be ineffective.

Denise O’Brien, Iowa farmer and board president of Pesticide Action Network, said, “Last year, EPA ignored concerns of farmers, caving to Monsanto’s pressure and rushing dicamba-resistant seeds to market. EPA has failed utterly to protect farmers from this exploding crisis.”

Ben Burkett, National Family Farm Coalition board president raising soy, old growth pine trees and roughly 20 different vegetables in Mississippi commented: “I’m firmly against using dicamba. Mother Nature will win this fight anyway, but dicamba is very detrimental to the environment and will cause more harm than good to farms and farmers.”

Burkett said the EPA failed to protect farmers, and it put at risk literally hundreds of endangered species.

EPA even concluded approval might harm an extraordinary number of the protected birds, mammals and insects in dozens of states, but it refused to seek the guidance of the federal expert wildlife agencies, as the Endangered Species Act requires, and instead approved Monsanto’s pesticide without any measures to protect them.

Earthjustice attorney Paul Achitoff said in a statement, “EPA’s disregard of both the law and the welfare of endangered whooping cranes, gray wolves, Indiana bats, and hundreds of other species at risk of extinction is unconscionable. That the EPA would indulge in this kind of recklessness and junk science to appease Monsanto is shocking.”

“The EPA’s foolish approval of dicamba left a deep scar across millions of acres of farms and forests,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The ill-advised rush to approve this dangerous drift-prone pesticide reflects just how far the EPA has strayed from its duty to protect Americans and wildlife from harmful toxins.”

(0) comments

Welcome to the discussion.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd,racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don't Threaten. Threats of harming anotherperson will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyoneor anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ismthat is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link oneach comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitnessaccounts, the history behind an article.