EPA to Decide the Future of Dicamba in 2020
January 19, 2020 The EPA this year will deliver important decisions to U.S. agriculture, including on chlorpyrifos, glyphosate, the neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, and atrazine, according to FarmProgress. But one product ag retailers and their grower-customers will be keeping a close eye on in 2020 is dicamba.
Rick Keigwin, Director of EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, spoke about some key decisions the agency will be making this year at the recent Southeast Regional Fruit and Vegetable Growers Conference in Savannah, GA.
The agency will decide in 2020 whether the registrations for new dicamba products remain or are modified further for the 2021 season. The registration for new dicamba herbicides used on new resistant crops such as soybeans and cotton started in 2016. It’s no secret the rollout ran into trouble due to drift, or off-target, issues, and crop injury complaints.
With further restrictions on the label, the agency renewed the registrations for the 2019 and 2020 seasons, but those registrations will run out at the end of this year if EPA doesn’t renew them. Some states used their authority to make further changes to labels for applications in state.
EPA required companies with the new dicamba products on the market to conduct studies last year in Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi to see if geography played a part in off-field movement and those reports are due soon, he said.
“This year we’ll be looking at the data the registrars have been required to generate,” Keigwin said. “We’re already in discussion with them, the state departments of agriculture and hope to engage soon with some academics about the research they may have underway. And then we’ll make a new regulatory decision likely in the August-September time frame before December to help in seed purchasing decisions for 2021.”
Keigwin said reports of non-performance with the new technology is also on the radar. “We don’t know if it’s a resistance issue. We don’t know if there’s some antagonism when dicamba and glyphosate are being applied together. So that’s one of the factors we’ll also be looking at and whether or not to renew the registration for the 2021 growing season.”
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