By TIM ALEXANDER

Illinois Correspondent

PEORIA, Ill. — Shortly after the U.S. EPA granted a two-year license for farmers to spray dicamba in-season, the popular herbicide became one of the hot-button topics in agriculture.

Off-target movements of spray-applied dicamba formulations resulted in hundreds, then thousands, of complaints from farmers in Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois and more than a dozen other states by mid-summer. Many producers now face legal issues associated with their dicamba usage, as do dicamba product manufacturers Monsanto, DuPont and BASF.

Recently the EPA, in conjunction with the product makers, announced a new set of label guidelines and regulations designed to restrict off-target spray drift during 2018, which is the second and final year of the two-year EPA license period granted for in-season dicamba usage. The new label guidelines were part of an expert panel discussion on ‘Dicamba: Where do we go From Here?’ moderated by DTN crop technology editor Pam Smith.

Included on the panel was Jay Magnussen, an Iowa farmer and agronomist who talked about his experiences with dicamba and how he sees dicamba products being used moving forward. He showed slides of 18-inch tall lambsquarter and waterhemp plants that were present in soybeans this spring before being treated in-season with a dicamba formulation.

“You can see it looks like the dicamba killed these weeds like it was Roundup in 1999. It really put them down, and the fields stayed beautiful all the way to fall,” Magnussen said. “When all the label directions are followed, life is good.”

But in another field treated with XtendMax, a surprise rainfall occurred just 90 minutes after application and a rescue treatment was required later in the growing season.

“It’s not like Roundup where we could spray it and it could withstand a rain a half-hour later. We’re going to have to be very diligent in the things we do and how we spray (dicamba),” Magnussen continued, before moving onto a slide of side-by-side soybean fields that illustrated the sometimes devastating results of dicamba spray drift on non-dicamba crops.

“We were very lucky we did not see drastic yield reduction from dicamba drift in northeast Iowa. I’d say I’d rather be lucky than good, but we’re going to have to be good from here on in. We’re not going to be able to be sloppy in our dicamba spraying,” he said, adding that the big picture on off-target dicamba spray damage in Iowa is still being developed as harvest reports come in.

Magnussen agreed with fellow panelist Jean Payne, president of the Illinois Fertilizer and Chemical Assoc. (IFCA), that as an agronomist he doesn’t relish the idea of another summer spent walking dicamba-damaged crop fields and attempting to sooth tattered relations between neighbors. Both hope the new application rules will take some of the variables out of farmers’ wayward applications. The new guidelines reduce the maximum allowable wind speed in which applicators can spray dicamba from 15-10 mph, and restricts applications to daylight hours, among other changes.

Dicamba spray drift affecting specialty crops can be an issue in Illinois and raises the bar on stewardship necessities for in-season dicamba applications, Payne said.

“If farmers can work things out between themselves, keeping it in the farming family, that is usually the best way to go,” she said. “But especially in Illinois where we have a lot of pumpkins, vineyards and specialty crops, there isn’t a lot of forgiveness there because typically those crops are not covered by crop insurance. All the specialty growers ask is that we just keep (dicamba) on our crops.”

Payne worries about the pressure state and federal lawmakers are feeling from specialty growers, rural citizens and non-Xtend soybean producers who may have been affected by off-target dicamba applications this year and want to see the controversial herbicide banned or, at least, restricted from in-season or “over the top” application.

“They don’t necessarily want to vote against farmers, but then they have 48 phone calls from people who live on the edge of town and farmers that are hopping mad. This is a situation you never want to put your legislators in,” Payne said. “Going into 2018 we have to understand that this (new dicamba) label is not just about protecting neighbors’ soybeans, but also about protecting everything else out there that exists in the rural landscape.”

Several companies that offer farm liability coverage to farmers were asked to send a representative to the webinar to offer opinions and insights on farmers’ liability exposure when spraying dicamba. However, all declined the offer to participate. Panelists advised farmers to review their liability coverage as it pertains specifically to off-target applications of dicamba – whether they grow Xtend or Liberty soybeans – with their insurance agent over the winter.

In addition to off-target application movements, volatility and tank contamination are other factors that led to this year’s problems with dicamba-related crop damage or loss, according to panelists. The IFCA is currently working with custom applicators to give them the tools to take to growers to promote increased best management practices and better dicamba stewardship in 2018, Payne said.

See the IFCA website, www.ifca.com, for more resources and training information on the new dicamba label.