American farmers may use dicamba products, newly revoked of registrations, through July 31, 2020. Whether or not these products will be available for use in future growing seasons remains unknown.
One agronomist says these products would be missed, if banned. He remains confident, however, that farmers will be able to raise good soybeans without dicamba herbicides.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit earlier this month vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) conditional registrations of three dicamba products: Engenia, FeXapan, and XtendiMax, due to ?substantially understated risks.?
Doyle Oerter, senior staff agronomist with Farmers Business Network (FBN), says this valuable tool posed risks, but was effective in treating tough-to-control weeds.
?Dicamba is commonly known as volatile, (and) it moves field-to-field from volatilization as winds carry it to non-target areas,? Oerter said. ?Over the years, we?ve had several bean fields get hurt economically and yield wise by dicamba injury. Now they?ve injected that trait to make dicamba beans that you can treat with dicamba products and control tough-to-control weeds like palmer amaranth, waterhemp, pigweed species, and giant ragweed.?
Dicamba made weed control, ?simple, easy, and more effective,? according to Oerter. However, producers raised good soybeans before dicamba products became available. Oerter rattles off a couple post-emergence herbicides, which could be substituted for dicamba.
?(The) first herbicide is Cadet. With Cadet, you can control the bulk of waterhemp, palmer amaranth, and giant ragweed. I would say 60- to 75-percent control, (on) average,? Oerter said. ?Then we have a product called Praxis Plus, which is a combination of glyphosate and Pursuit. You have to have the RoundUp Ready, or glyphosate tolerant gene in your soybeans to use Praxis Plus. You would get 60- to- 90-percent control of those weeds. Then we have Fomesafen, which will get roughly 60- to 80-percent of the three major weeds.”
