The Future of Dicamba
With 60 million acres of Xtend cotton and soybeans and rising herbicide-resistance problems across the crop spectrum, dicamba use in U.S. agriculture is at or near record heights this year.
Yet the chemical's future has never been less certain.
The most pressing question facing farmers and the industry is whether two companies, BASF and Bayer, will be able to get new registrations approved for XtendiMax and Engenia, two over-the-top dicamba herbicides whose registrations were vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in early June.
With no clear timeline from EPA on when it might make those decisions -- nor any information on what new labels would look like -- the Xtend cropping system is faced with uncertainty as farmers near the fall seed-buying season, with some opting to switch to other herbicide-tolerant platforms. "I like the weed control [of dicamba], but not the risk," as one southeast Michigan farmer, Raymond Simpkins, put it.
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Yet the chemical's future has never been less certain.
The most pressing question facing farmers and the industry is whether two companies, BASF and Bayer, will be able to get new registrations approved for XtendiMax and Engenia, two over-the-top dicamba herbicides whose registrations were vacated by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in early June.
With no clear timeline from EPA on when it might make those decisions -- nor any information on what new labels would look like -- the Xtend cropping system is faced with uncertainty as farmers near the fall seed-buying season, with some opting to switch to other herbicide-tolerant platforms. "I like the weed control [of dicamba], but not the risk," as one southeast Michigan farmer, Raymond Simpkins, put it.
Click Here to read more.