Short Wave - The Fight Over A Weedkiller, In The Fields And In The Courts

Episode Date: June 15, 2020

A federal court recently ordered farmers to stop spraying one of the country's most widely used herbicides, dicamba. NPR's food and agriculture correspondent Dan Charles tells us the ruling has turned the world of Midwestern agriculture upside down. Then the Environmental Protection Agency came out with its own order.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey, everybody, it's Emily Kwong, Shortwave's reporter. So we bid farewell to Emily Vaughn on Friday, our fact checker slash intern, and we think some of you may have confused our names. I'm here to reassure you that I, Emily Kwong, am still very much a part of this show and staying on, because who else would keep Maddie in line, you know? And oh yeah, if you haven't already, subscribe or follow the show, so you're always getting new episodes. Okay, here's today's Shortwave. Thanks for listening. You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Maddie Safai here with NPR's food and agriculture correspondent, Dan Charles.

Welcome back to the show, Dan. Hi, Maddie. So a few months ago, you told us about kind of a huge fight raging in the world of agriculture over a pesticide called Dicamba. It's one of the countries most widely used, but arguably one of the most resented weed killers. And a federal court recently weighed in on this. Right. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rule that it is no longer legal for farmers to spray dicampo on their crops. This gets a little bit into the weeds, Maddie.

Okay. But this decision came after several environmental groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency, the regulatory agency that oversees this. It sued the agency for reapproving the use of dicamba two years ago. Okay, so we're going to dig into this Dicamba debate in a bit. But first, like, tell me how this court ruling is being received because this is a huge deal, right? Like, tons of farmers use this stuff. A lot of money is at stake.

Yeah, it turned the world of Midwestern agriculture upside down. Let me just set the scene a little bit. Gene Payne, who is president of the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Association, was outside grilling dinner when the ruling came out. She didn't know anything about it. She went inside, discovered dozens of messages on her phone. So about 35 text messages and missed phone calls. Everybody had questions. We heard this ruling. What does this mean? Can I still use dicamba? What is going on? It was really chaos for the people she does business with. Because we are in the middle of soybean production season in the largest soybean state in the United States.

You have farmers with Dicamba in their tanks ready to go out and spray it, a billion-dollar harvest hanging in the balance. Right, right. And at least in some places, state officials were very clear. The court's decision was the law. Guys, you need to quit using this. But then a few days later, the EPA weighed in with its own order, which kind of put that into doubt and left people wondering what are the rules for this year. The environmental groups say

the EPA is simply defying the court. Wow. Okay. So it's a battle in the fields and in the courts. Exactly. So today on the show, an update on the fate of Daikamba and what it means for the future of farming. Dan, I want to back up for a second to get the basics of what this fight is all about. For starters, what is Dicamba? How is it different from a weed killer you could just pick up at the hardware store? So this chemical Dicamba has been around for a long time. But farmers are now using it in a new way and they're using a lot more of it because the company Monsanto, which is now owned by Bayer, it created varieties of soybeans and cotton that have been genetically engineered to tolerate Dicamba. So a farmer can spray their entire field with Dicamba and all the weeds. The

seeds die, but the soybeans themselves are fine. Exactly. And when the EPA first approved this four years ago, a lot of soybean farmers loved it because it was super effective. In 2018, I went to Arkansas. I visited a farmer named Mike McCarty, who farms near the Mississippi River. And he told me about the terrible problems he'd been having with this weed called pigweed. Pigweed have been a major battle for us, not just myself, but every farmer in this area.

And we're fighting them as much as we can. We just don't have a tool in our box that we'll take care of it. This is the first year that we've had something that has worked. So, okay, that sounds great for Mike McCarty. But Daicamba has also been causing some serious problems, right? That's right, Maddie. You remember I visited another farmer also in Arkansas named David Wilde. Yeah, and he also has land along the Mississippi and grows soybeans.

Right. And he didn't want to use these new dikamba. tolerant soybeans. He planted different varieties, used other herbicides. But then his soybean fields got hit by Dicamba drifting in from fields next door. You can see there that that was severely deformed and there's just one bean in that pod, severely damaged from Dicamba. Where's the closest Dicamba sprang to here, do you think? Right there. Right across the ditch. Yeah. And Dan, if I remember correctly, the damage to Wildy's crops, it wasn't caused by anyone like intentionally spraying dicamba on his fields. It was because dicamba is super volatile, meaning it can easily become a

vapor that can travel, like a good distance. Exactly. Scientists at a bunch of universities have looked into this. They've studied dicambas volatility, and they found that it happens a lot more than with other herbicides. So in practice, what that means is a farmer can sprays fields or her fields, the sun comes up, gets hot, and the chemical will evaporate from the soil, from the leaves. And at that point, you know, who knows where it'll go? It can drift in the breeze, float over into the next field, into the woods. And that kind of damage that will be experienced, it's happened across the Midwest, the Mid-South, millions and millions of acres of crops. I mean, that sounds like a nightmare for farmers that are not growing these dicamba-resistant crops.

It has been. It's provoked incredible conflicts between neighbors within agricultural communities and not just for farmers, also for fruit and vegetable growers. Right, right. And it's damaged wild plants during a reporting trip I took to Tennessee. I remember driving down a country road. And there were sycamore trees all along the road with their leaves kind of curled up from Dicamba. And so those are the battle lines that have formed in recent years between farmers who love Dicamber. DiCamba, other farmers who hate it, gardeners, environmentalists who point to evidence they're being

hurt by it. So where does this court case involving the EPA come into play, Dan? Okay. So these environmental groups sued the EPA, and their claim was the EPA violated the law by re-approving these specific uses of DICMBA just two years ago. Right. So the environmental groups were arguing that the EPA should have looked into all these concerns about dicamba and essentially done something about it, right?

Right, because, I mean, the EPA is supposed to follow the law, right? The Congress passes the law. The EPA is supposed to enforce them. And the law on pesticide says when the EPA approves any use of a pesticide, it's supposed to make sure that that chemical will not cause a, these are the words in the law, an unreasonable adverse effect. And the court, in its decision, went through all these well-documented problems with dicamba. And it really kind of slapped the agency down. It said the EPA just flat out ignored these

things, which are clearly unreasonable adverse effects. And the court said the EPA did not follow the law. It overturned the EPA's approval. Technically, the court vacated the EPA's decision. I kind of like that word vacated. It's very, it's very lawyerly for sure. So, okay, so the court sided with these environmental groups and ruled that these dicamba products shouldn't have been. It's very, it's re-approved. And that basically makes that illegal for farmers to spray them. But. But somebody's got to enforce the law, right? Right, right. Like the EPA. And the EPA doesn't seem like it really wants to enforce it. So the first thing it did was it said it was disappointed with the ruling. And then a few days later, it came out with an order that says,

okay, Daekamba is technically off the market. But if you're a farmer and you already bought dicamba, you can still go ahead and spray it, at least through July. Can the EPA do that, Dan? Like, is that, at this point, is that breaking the law? Yeah, well, who's going to stop on, Maddie? The environmental groups have just gone back to court, filed an emergency motion asking the Ninth Circuit to hold the EPA in contempt of court. But in the meantime, farmers are spraying, and, you know, before long, the job will be done. I should say, you know, they're not. You know, they're just spraying out of spite. There is a very practical reason for it. You know, it's June. It's the middle of the growing season. They've already planted their dicamba-resistant soybeans. They were

counting on using dicamba. If they can't use dikamba to kill the weeds, they, you know, would have to use something else or nothing. They'd likely see reduced crop yields, reduced profits. So a lot of them are going to use this chemical if they can, if at all possible. Okay, all right, I get it. So that's the fight right now. But for the future, you're saying that even the EPA agrees that farmers will have to stop spraying dicamba by July 31st. So is that really the end of the road for this herbicide? Yeah, well, it might be.

But then again, maybe not. A couple of things. First of all, Bayer, the company that's really been pushing dicamba, it has already submitted a new application to the EPA asking for approval. to sell dicamba again next year, 2021. So conceivably, the EPA could approve that application, maybe with tighter conditions on how farmers can use it. The second thing is the whole seed industry has already produced lots and lots of soybean seed with those special genes that allow the plants to tolerate

dicamba. Even next year, you know, farmers are going to buy those seeds and they're going to plant them and they're going to be tempted to spray dicamba illegally. and just hope they don't get caught. You know, Dan, can I ask you something as a reporter that has been covering this from start to finish? Like, how long have you been reporting on Daekamba? Five years, basically. Were you surprised with this court ruling when they're shutting down Daikamba?

Like, I was, and I'm just genuinely curious if you were surprised. The decision was kind of shocking just in the absolute hard cutoff that it – Right. You know, because people have been fighting over this for years, right? And trying to institute conditions that would maybe allow farmers to apply it safely. People have been sort of pushing and tugging. And the industry keeps insisting, oh, it's manageable, it's manageable. And then to have the court step in and just sort of say, done. Yeah. No more spraying, no more sales. It was kind of shocking. And I, you know, in talking with some people in agriculture, They almost couldn't believe it, you know, that the court could actually do that. Yeah. All right, Dan Charles, the saga continues. Thank you for this update.

I'm sure you'll be back here to talk about it anymore in the future. It's a pleasure. Thank you very much, Maddie. This episode was produced by Abby Wendell, edited by Viet Le, and fact-checked by Emily Vaughn. I'm Maddie Safaya. Join us tomorrow for more shortwave from NPR.