Here’s how the Illinois Department of Ag will handle misuse complaints this year, plus a look at managing planting delays with a June 30 cutoff for dicamba.
 
The Illinois Department of Agriculture is heading into the 2019 growing season ready to field complaints about off-target drift and damage from dicamba.
 
While not many complaints have been received so far in 2019, Doug Owens, chief of the Bureau of Environmental Programs, says he has a good idea where a majority of the complaints will come from this year as his bureau continues to wrap up complaints from 2018. IDOA is still rendering decisions on about 5% of complaints from 2018.
 
“Over 90% of the complaints we received last growing season were from nontolerant soybean fields,” Owens says, adding that his bureau has 18 field inspectors who interview complainants within days of receiving a complaint. They then visit the site to take samples and pictures within a few weeks.
 
“We interview the complainant, applicator, [and] check application records, load tickets, labels and maps. We submit that as a packet, and those are reviewed by two or three people separately to determine if action must be taken,” he says.
 
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