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Corn Belt farmers embrace a season without over-the-top dicamba

U.S. soybean and cotton farmers are taking a different approach to weed management as the U.S. EPA reviews three over-the-top dicamba products.

Jordan Bredehoft from Lafayette County, Missouri says it’s his first year using Enlist and Liberty to control waterhemp in soybeans. He tells Brownfield he will miss over-the-top dicamba.

“That post, over-the-top application really seemed to clean and wipe out everything else that was an issue and we didn’t get the first time. Now, I’ve heard good things about Liberty; if you use the higher rate you will get rid of the weeds. I’ll have a good update at the end of the year.”

Aaron Porter, who raises soybeans and cotton in Stoddard County, Missouri, tells Brownfield he won’t miss it.

“We had so much resistance anyway with dicamba. It wasn’t very effective really and we’re going to focus more on pre-emergence herbicides and then, trying to hit weeds quicker and more often with Liberty.”

Nathan Reed, a cotton and soybean grower in Lee County, Arkansas, is using crop rotation, Liberty herbicide and other products to manage pigweeds. He says without over-the-top dicamba, controlling weeds in cotton will be more difficult.

“If there’s a legal path to spray dicamba, yes, I’ll use it, but right now there’s no legal way to make an over-the-top application of dicamba.”

Other farmers, like Jason Frerichs from Roberts County, South Dakota, stopped using over-the-top dicamba for kochia control a few years ago. “This is our third season of Enlist soybeans completely.”

Tom Barber at the University of Arkansas says farmers shouldn’t expect a last-minute approval that allows over-the-top dicamba use this spring. He says no requests have been made to the U.S. EPA for a special label dicamba formulation. It also hasn’t been requested in Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee or South Dakota.

Barber says there’s no registrant who will step up and make that happen.

“Whether we decide to do it or not isn’t the case, the company who has the product must have the submission packet, if you will, and they have to approve of the submission.”

But he says there are still dicamba products registered for use that aren’t applied over-the-top and farmers will have to be patient as the EPA reviews the product registrations.

Last year, a federal court order vacated the registrations for OTT dicamba applications. A few months later, the companies (Bayer, BASF and Syngenta) that make over-the-top dicamba submitted modified labels for approval.

It typically takes 17-months for the U.S. EPA to conduct a review and the agency hasn’t completed it yet. The EPA tells Brownfield the “complicated review” will require a comment period from stakeholders before a final decision is made.

EPA says several key steps remain in the decision-making process including developing technical assessments and a proposed regulatory position sufficient to meet the requirements of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The EPA tells Brownfield they’re targeting a regulatory decision for three over-the-top dicamba products later this year, acknowledging that the decision may inform a farmer’s plans for the following growing season.