A new Environmental Protection Agency report says last year's label changes for three herbicides didn't reduce reports of dicamba drift and injury this year, and "said the agency cannot move fast enough to make regulatory changes to dicamba use by the 2022 spray season,"reports Emily Unglesbee of DTN/The Progressive Farmer. "But in the report, EPA promised to help states 'restrict or narrow the over-the-top uses of dicamba' if state officials found it necessary for over-the-top herbicides XtendiMax, Engenia and Tavium. The agency also said it would not allow states to expand the use of dicamba for next year."
In 2021 EPA received about 3,500 reports of dicamba-related incidents, "including reports of alleged injury to more than 1 million acres of non-dicamba-tolerant soybean acres, as well as other crops such as sugarbeets, rice, sweet potatoes, peanuts and grapes," Unglesbee reports. "The agency also described damage to non-agricultural landscapes, such as a 160,000-acre wildlife refuge, and called out 280 incident reports in counties where endangered species are present." The true amount of dicamba-related damage is likely much higher, the agency said.
The Center for Food Safety and other environmental groups are likely to use the report in their federal lawsuit against EPA; they're seeking "to vacate the current dicamba registrations of XtendiMax, Engenia and Tavium, just as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did in June 2020," Unglesbee reports.
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