STURGIS, SD – A U.S. appeals court has issued a ruling vacating the EPA’s registration of three dicamba herbicides, calling into question the continued use of the herbicide in South Dakota and other grower states.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the EPA “substantially understated risks that it acknowledged and failed entirely to acknowledge other risks” (such as off-target damage) dicamba poses. It said the agency violated federal regulations when it extended its approval of registration for the herbicide that was to cover the 2020 season.
The ruling applies to Bayer’s (Monsanto) XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and Corteva’s FeXapan. It does not mention another dicamba herbicide, Syngenta’s Tavium.
The Court also stated that the EPA substantially understated the amount of dicamba-tolerant seed acreage that had been planted in 2018, and, correspondingly, the amount of dicamba herbicide that had been sprayed on those post-emergent crops. The Court also said the EPA also was “agnostic” about whether formal complaints of dicamba damage were under-reported or overreported the actual damage. The Court said record evidence clearly showed that dicamba damage was substantially under-reported.
The ruling applies to the current registration, which was set to run through December 20th of this year.
