Monsanto's Farm Seed Killer Is Creating a War Between Farmers and Their Neighbors

Monsanto's Farm Seed Killer Is Creating a War Between Farmers and Their Neighbors

The farmers of southwestern Missouri are in a war with their neighbors.farm seed killer It’s a battle that involves a Monsanto-backed weed killer that is causing widespread damage to soybeans and cotton — and even wild plants like trees and berries — on farms across the region. The weed killer is called dicamba, and Monsanto lobbied for EPA approval to spray it on crops that have been genetically modified to tolerate it. That system, which Monsanto launched in 2015, is expected to cover more than half of all US soybean and cotton plantings this year. But a few farmers haven’t bought into it, and they’re blaming dicamba-spraying neighbors for widespread damage to their crops this season.

It’s a big problem for the nation’s farmers.farm seed killer Dicamba is an effective and inexpensive weed killer, but it’s also highly volatile and can damage or kill neighboring crops if it drifts into them. The weed killer has been sprayed on more than 50 million acres this year, and the damage is estimated at $3 billion. Farmers have filed thousands of complaints with state departments of agriculture, and many are suing their dicamba-spraying neighbors. The damage has driven wedges between communities, and even families, in rural areas across the Midwest.

Farmers have been killing weeds for decades with herbicides, or plant killers.farm seed killer But some weeds have developed resistance to the most common herbicide, glyphosate. That’s why Monsanto and other biotechnology companies pushed “Roundup Ready” seeds in the late 1990s, genetically tweaked to resist the herbicide. By 1999, those seeds had become the majority of the US soybean crop and the majority of the corn.

Monsanto and its competitors continued to develop other genetically engineered seeds that would resist glyphosate and other herbicides.farm seed killer In 2016, Monsanto began marketing a new class of soybean and cotton seeds that could tolerate dicamba, in addition to the older Roundup-resistant varieties. The company and its partner, BASF, the German chemical giant, marketed them heavily.

Dicamba is very similar to glyphosate, so it’s not surprising that some weeds have developed resistance to it as well. But if farmers use a mix of herbicides and other tools to fight weeds, they can keep them from developing resistance to any one of them.

That’s why the USDA and EPA are reviewing the safety of a herbicide called 2,4-D, which is related to dicamba. The agencies hope to approve it next spring, a few months before the dicamba-resistant crops are due to be planted. The review should determine whether it is safe to use with the new genetically engineered seeds and what steps should be taken to limit damage from drifting. The agencies say they will consider all of the evidence in a coordinated action. They may decide to approve the chemical and seeds together, or separately. It’s possible they will also require farmers to submit a plan for how they will prevent the spread of weeds in their fields. That might include limiting the number of dicamba-resistant crops they plant or using a different herbicide to combat them.

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