At a Glance
- In Ohio, Michigan and the Northeast, dicamba is allowed until June 30.
- The sale of dicamba products is allowed through May 31.
- There are options outside of dicamba, but effectiveness varies by weed.
Fifth-generation Ohio farmer Nathan Eckel says dicamba serves an important purpose on the farm in Perrysville he manages with his two brothers.
“It’s a really good tool, but that doesn’t mean we don’t need some clear-cut regulation,” he says. “We have had some drift issues in the past, but nothing we couldn’t get past with our neighbors — nothing catastrophic. It is a great preemergence tool to really give us that extra edge we always need, because who knows when that window of planting opportunity is going to be there?”
On Feb. 6, a federal court in Arizona vacated EPA’s 2020 registrations for dicamba products — XtendiMax, Engenia, Tavium and others — to be used in over-the-top applications in soybeans or cotton.
Then last week, EPA announced that it was allowing existing stocks of the herbicide to be used until June 30 in Ohio, Michigan, and all the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states. The sale and distribution of dicamba products will be allowed until May 31.
DICAMBA PIVOT: Ohio Wood County farmer Nathan Eckel says he plans to use Liberty in place of dicamba this year. (Photo courtesy of Eckel family)
Dicamba has been effective in controlling glyphosate-resistant broadleaf weeds, but its expanded use has increased the risk of drift damage.
Eckel, who is also vice president of the Ohio Soybean Council, said his farm turned to dicamba when it was having heavy marestail and waterhemp issues. “We haven't taken Roundup out of the equation yet, but dicamba did fill that gap with Roundup escapes we were having,” he says.
He and his brothers farm 2,000 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat, and raise 900 head of beef cattle. They have applied dicamba on about 900 acres of soybeans the past four years.
Last year, they scaled back, using it primarily as a preemergence application. “And if we had a bad escape of weeds, we would use it on a case-by-case basis,” Eckel adds. “It was nice to have that tool in the toolbox.”
Eckel says he is pivoting and combating herbicide resistance in soybeans by spraying Liberty. He still plans on using dicamba as a preseason burndown, which is still allowed as the ban prohibits over-the-top postemergence applications.
What’s the biggest impact? He says it comes down to the availability and cost of Liberty. “Are they going to jack up the price of Liberty because they know we’re not able to use dicamba in-season, as in years past?” Eckel asks.
And like most farmers, Eckel says he would have preferred a heads-up before buying inputs for the season.
“At the end of the day, it’s the federal government suing the federal government over not doing their due diligence,” he says. “So, who knows how long that'll take before they actually figure out who's at fault? Once again, as a farmer, we're caught in the middle … in the crossfire.”
What’s next?
Newburg, Md., grower Chip Bowling spent much of his postharvest period planning for the 2024 growing season.
As dicamba has been a godsend on his farm, he planned on going 100% Xtend and XtendFlex soybeans for the coming growing season. He preordered all his soybeans and chemicals months ago.
“I had been getting really good results using dicamba, especially on Palmer amaranth,” Bowling says. “Eight or nine years ago, I had a terrible outbreak of it, and dicamba really helped clean it up.”
Knowing the dicamba lawsuit was in court, he had a Plan B for his farm. He considered switching some of his 1,100 acres of soybeans to Enlist varieties, which are also tolerant to multiple herbicides but aren’t engineered to be tolerant to dicamba — instead, 2,4-D.
“It wasn't like it caught us flat-footed,” Bowling says. “We had been planning on a Plan B since late last fall. I knew that it was in court. You kind of have a gut feeling of how things are going to go. You just hear murmurs in the industry about how things were going to end up.”
And while he still plans on using dicamba this season, he’s uncertain about the future, and that makes him nervous. His concern is, what’s next? A ban on glyphosate? A ban on certain seed treatments?
“What concerns me is you have lawmakers and politicians that make their decisions based on emotion rather than science and data,” Bowling says. “That’s where we spend our time trying to educate people, because the results aren’t going to affect them at all.”
It’s also a concern for Lindsay Thompson, executive director of Maryland Grain Producers.
“We’re seeing pesticide decisions made in legislatures and courts not based on science,” Thompson says.
NEW RULES: On Feb. 6, a federal court in Arizona vacated EPA’s 2020 registrations for dicamba products — XtendiMax, Engenia, Tavium and others — to be used in over-the-top applications in soybeans or cotton. Then last week, EPA announced that it was allowing existing stocks of the herbicide to be used until June 30 in Ohio, Michigan, and all the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states. The sale and distribution of dicamba products will be allowed until May 31. (JJ Gouin/Getty Images)
The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act is the federal statute that governs the registration, distribution, sale and use of pesticides and herbicides in the U.S.
Thompson says many legislatures have gone outside the FIFRA regulatory framework to make their own regulations to either ban or severely scale back the use of certain chemicals on farms.
Cory Chelko, East Coast product manager for Revere Seed, says the Arizona court’s decision left an unworkable timeline for growers who then had to decide whether to go with Enlist or do something else.