WASHINGTON— Farmers and conservation groups filed a lawsuit today challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s reapproval of the dangerous, drift-prone pesticide dicamba sprayed on genetically engineered cotton and soybeans.
Federal court decisions in 2020 and in 2024 struck down the agency’s previous approvals of the weedkiller as unlawful.
But despite assurances from EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin that new restrictions would prevent the pesticide’s damaging drift, the new approval is in many ways more permissive than past approvals. It eliminates the June cutoff date of prior approvals, meaning it can be sprayed in July and August. And it drops a previously required 100-foot buffer to protect endangered species and their habitat.
“EPA’s re-registration of dicamba flies in the face of a decade of damning evidence, real world farming know-how and sound science, and, oh-by-the-way, the law,” said George Kimbrell, legal director of Center for Food Safety and counsel in the case. “In reality the Trump administration has once again betrayed farmers and poisoned the environment to pad corporate pesticide profits. We will see them in court.”
“Lee Zeldin’s hollow promises that new restrictions on dicamba will prevent damaging drift to nearby farms and backyard gardens are totally unsupported by the facts or common sense,” said Nathan Donley, environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Zeldin insists he’s working closely with the Make American Healthy Again movement to make pesticides safer. But his reckless reapproval of this dangerous, highly toxic pesticide shows his words to be nothing more than an attempt to ‘MAHA-wash’ the facts. No one in the healthy foods movement has been fooled by Zeldin’s pro-industry spin game.”
Since its first approval in 2016, dicamba’s drift has damaged millions of acres of farmland and caused devastating damage to orchards, vegetable farms, home gardens, native plants, trees, and wildlife refuges across the country. Experts have found dicamba drift damage to be the worst of any pesticide in the history of U.S. agriculture. The current approval provides even fewer protections from dicamba drift and damage than past approvals.
The approval comes months after Kyle Kunkler, a former lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, was installed as the deputy assistant administrator for pesticides in the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Kunkler has been a vocal cheerleader for dicamba, and this administration has not recused him from working on dicamba at the EPA despite his work lobbying for it during his previous employment.
A 2021 Inspector General’s investigation found that dicamba’s original approval excluded important scientific evidence during the first Trump administration’s rush to approve it.
“This is déjà vu all over again,” said Jim Goodman, president of the National Family Farm Coalition. “Despite an extensive history of failed weed management in genetically engineered crops, thousands of complaints by farmers about crop damage caused by drift, and two prior court bans, EPA is once again re-registering dicamba. There is no rationale for reapproving this incredibly harmful herbicide other than to line the pockets of the agrichemical industry. National Family Farm Coalition is standing up for family farmers and rural communities everywhere in urging our courts to block this egregious, irresponsible, and unjust reapproval.”
“Dicamba’s tendency to volatilize and drift is well-documented and when dicamba was registered for over-the-top spraying our vegetable farm, like so many farms, saw a significant decline in marketable produce from damage,” said Rob Faux, an Iowa farmer and communications manager at Petitioner Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network. “Successful legal challenges removed dicamba’s prior registrations, and because of that we have had successful seasons without dicamba drift. A new dicamba registration will, once again, pit farmer against farmer, and some of us will be forced to exit food production.”
The lawsuit was filed by the National Family Farm Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity, Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, and Center for Food Safety, represented by legal counsel from the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.
Background
In 2016 Monsanto, which has since been acquired by Bayer, opened the floodgates to massive spraying of dicamba by genetically engineering soybeans and cotton to withstand “over-the-top” spraying of the pesticide. The results have been devastating, with drift damage to millions of acres of non-genetically engineered soybeans as well as to orchards, gardens, trees, and other plants on a scale unprecedented in the history of U.S. agriculture. Dozens of imperiled species, including pollinators like monarch butterflies and rusty patched bumblebees, are also threatened by the pesticide.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that up to 15 million acres of soybeans were damaged by dicamba drift in 2018 alone. Beekeepers in multiple states have reported sharp drops in honey production due to dicamba drift suppressing the flowering plants their bees need for sustenance. Dicamba’s damage to flowering plants was so severe that it forced Arkansas’ largest beekeeper to move his operation out of state.
In 2020 a federal court revoked the EPA’s dicamba registration. In its decision the court explained that in approving dicamba, the EPA had failed to examine how “dicamba use would tear the social fabric of farming communities.” Four months later the agency nonetheless reapproved the pesticide, claiming new measures would cut down damage.
A 2021 EPA report found that restrictions to limit herbicide drift had failed and the pesticide was continuing to cause massive drift damage to crops and natural areas. In February 2024 a federal court banned the spraying of dicamba on Bayer’s dicamba- resistant crops a second time and outlined the EPA’s failure to consult victims of dicamba drift or any other stakeholder before the reapproval.
Today’s decision substantially loosens previously weak restrictions the pesticide companies proposed when they applied for dicamba reapprovals in 2024. It allows year-round use and eliminates the proposed cutoff date of June 12 for dicamba application to soybeans. Restrictions on when spraying can occur during the day to reduce volatility have also been dropped. The EPA will no longer require review of mixes of pesticides with dicamba, even though dicamba pesticide mixtures often enhance its volatility and drift damage.
Instead of setting calendar cutoff dates to prohibit applications in the heat of summer when drift and volatility is worse, the EPA has set temperature-based restrictions that require so-called “volatility reducing agents” on hotter days. Volatility reducing agents have failed to reduce dicamba volatility in the past. Applications would be prohibited at temperatures exceeding 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but it is unclear how this could be enforced.
Today’s approval maintains the same limited spray drift buffers that were ineffective in previous registrations of the pesticide. But a volatility buffer intended to protect endangered species has been eliminated.
