And if you read the "pest" list of affected plants on the 2-4-D/Dicamba labels, it includes nearly EVERYTHING, including hardwood trees and ornamentals.
THAT should never be allowed on the market.
Tree Damage From Crop Spraying
- Thread starter TNTreeHugger
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THAT should never be allowed on the market.
I'm afraid you don't quite understand how product labels work, nor how the biochemistry of the herbicides work.
If a chemical interferes with an essential botanical function inside the plant... It dies. All plants that share the same botanical function will be similarly affected. 2,4-D & Dicamba pretty much interfere with ALL dicots (the broadleaf plants), so you would expect their mode of action to affect nearly everything that isn't a grass or a conifer.
Also: product labels are heavily regulated by the EPA. It costs money to test each chemical and to find out which plants are affected, and how severely. The longer a herbicide is on the market, the more plants it will have on it's list, simply because it takes a long time to accumulate the information.
So far as I am aware, there is no herbicide anywhere that will kill off the cockle-burs and other broadleaf weeds in the corn field that won't also kill off your rosebush. There are some very specialized herbicides available in the farming market, so there is probably quite a few I've never heard of. For the most part, those herbicides take too much money to develop a label for the Turf and Ornamental folks, so we cannot use the specialized Ag chemicals.
Flumetsulam and Metribuzin will help control them but remember a cockle-bur has 9 lives. The seed pod has two different types of seeds, one that will come up in a few days and another that may lay dormant for years before germinating. It may take years to get control and you have to kill the plant before it develops a seed pod. Roundup may be used in Roundup- Ready corn and soy beans.
I said the exact same thing, but with fewer words.
You just disagree that they shouldn't be on the market for those reasons.
What I hate in my flowerbeds is the "sticky grass."
It pulls out easily, but spreads like wildfire.
I'm having a hard time letting this go.
Yesterday I drove through "town" which is really just a very small rural neighborhood. Damage everywhere I looked, same as what's in my yard. Poplars in the town park and dogwoods in town look like mine. Trees along the main road are damaged. Pretty sure I now know why there aren't many large old trees around here. Lots of oak skeletons though.
Think I'll take a little road trip today and see just how far it goes.
It's becoming more and more obvious, from what I see, this is NOT a farmer/applicator error incident and going by what the inspector and the guy from the co-op 20 miles away said, it's widespread.
Any suggestions on who to contact about suing the chemical company on behalf of the environment?
I thought the EPA would have been a good place to begin, but haven't heard back from them.
Yesterday I drove through "town" which is really just a very small rural neighborhood. Damage everywhere I looked, same as what's in my yard. Poplars in the town park and dogwoods in town look like mine. Trees along the main road are damaged. Pretty sure I now know why there aren't many large old trees around here. Lots of oak skeletons though.
Think I'll take a little road trip today and see just how far it goes.
It's becoming more and more obvious, from what I see, this is NOT a farmer/applicator error incident and going by what the inspector and the guy from the co-op 20 miles away said, it's widespread.
Any suggestions on who to contact about suing the chemical company on behalf of the environment?
I thought the EPA would have been a good place to begin, but haven't heard back from them.
ValleyForge
Liberty Farms
The Employment Prevention Agency would be the last place to go…..
just curious, we’re the houses there before the farms?
This has always been a farming community, if that's what you're asking.
I've seen old farmhouses deteriorate from neglect and disappear and the land they occupy be assimilated into neighboring farmland.
Just googled the people who own the place behind me - one brother has a background in landscape and horticulture, the other is a US attorney in Nashville. Hard to say which side of the fence they'll stand on.
The attorney for the nearby town also owns a huge chunk of the farmland.
Major conflicts of interest abound.
Just emailed a letter to Morgan & Morgan attorney's.
I think you are reading far too much into this.
It being wide spread is likely because of weather and general environmental issues.
1) That's possible. But I feel like I need to peruse it further.
2) How so?
I can think of LOTS of herbicides that wipe out cockle-burs. I haven't checked the labels yet, but I'll bet Flumetsulam and Metribuzin will also wipe out TNT's rose bushes. That was my original statement, you know.
I've never had any problem killing off the 'burs. My soil sterilants have no trouble with them, nor rose bushes, either. Some of those pesky wild grasses are incredibly tough to kill, and I still get a bunch of biennial plants that keep coming up when the herbicide wears down just a bit. I hate those Canada thistles! They just keep coming back... They are worse than dandelions.
The relevant agencies probably knew about your observations before you made them. I suspect your only hope for widespread concern is to get some publicity. Become a herbicide activist, get other folks involved, form a PAC, take donations, etc. Before too long you'll hear from the manufacturers. They don't like that kind of publicity.
I'm working my way up the ladder - don't want to contact the newspaper without more information.
They're having a tractor pull in town tonight and I thought of making a short speech about my observations and who they can contact if they see the same thing on their property... but I'm no public speaker - I just pretend to be one on the internet.
Idk, it may pan out that nobody can do anything about it, and maybe there's nothing that can be done, but I feel like I have to pursue it and at least find out... and at the same time not make enemies of my neighbor/farmers.
Tricky situation.
They called me about my email.
After an hour on the phone and being transferred to five different people, who all asked the same questions about "what happened" the last one finally said they can't help. When I asked why, she said their not handling this type of case at the moment (I knew she was lying) so I asked, "You're not handling toxins and environmental cases now (which is her department)? She stuttered a little and I asked, "You're not interested because there isn't any physical damage. right?" She said yes.
Well, no one can say I didn't give it my best.
Decades ago I had a state issued Pesticide Consultant license and spraying ester based phenoxy herbicides on a warm to hot day with or without wind is pushing the needle into the stupid zone. Amine formulations of the same herbicide have far less volatility and are just as effective in their control and sometime even more so as they don't do the quick burn down that ester formulations provide. I live in wine county and wine grapes are super sensitive to phenoxy herbicides, so I only use amine formulations on my place and only apply on calm, cool mornings and evenings to avoid impacting my neighbor's crops.
From my perspective this is more like a tool that was misused, rather than a defective tool.
From my perspective this is more like a tool that was misused, rather than a defective tool.
The scope of the use seems to be getting ignored, here.
I've been preferentially using the ester formulations for years. Great stuff, and yes, it absolutely works better. I also have never found any need to avoid higher temperatures, although I find that once it gets hot out, the phenoxy herbicides just don't work so well, anyway.
The difference between my use and the farmer is the vast scale at which they apply. When I treat a nice big 20,000sq.ft. yard with a hot weed control application, that is about 5-10 seconds of matching spray area for that tractor treating the farmer's fields. 320 acres (plus adjacent fields?) creates an atmosphere sufficiently perfused with the volatile herbicides to affect the adjacent plants. I'd bet that it wasn't so much the atmospheric conditions causing the problem as it was the sheer size of the treated areas. Put the two conditions together and you see a problem.
I've been preferentially using the ester formulations for years. Great stuff, and yes, it absolutely works better. I also have never found any need to avoid higher temperatures, although I find that once it gets hot out, the phenoxy herbicides just don't work so well, anyway.
The difference between my use and the farmer is the vast scale at which they apply. When I treat a nice big 20,000sq.ft. yard with a hot weed control application, that is about 5-10 seconds of matching spray area for that tractor treating the farmer's fields. 320 acres (plus adjacent fields?) creates an atmosphere sufficiently perfused with the volatile herbicides to affect the adjacent plants. I'd bet that it wasn't so much the atmospheric conditions causing the problem as it was the sheer size of the treated areas. Put the two conditions together and you see a problem.
I'm working my way up the ladder - don't want to contact the newspaper without more information.
They're having a tractor pull in town tonight and I thought of making a short speech about my observations and who they can contact if they see the same thing on their property... but I'm no public speaker - I just pretend to be one on the internet.
Idk, it may pan out that nobody can do anything about it, and maybe there's nothing that can be done, but I feel like I have to pursue it and at least find out... and at the same time not make enemies of my neighbor/farmers.
Tricky situation.
You'd better stay away from an arena full of farmer motor-heads and tractor nuts. That won't be a sympathetic audience.
I got the impression from the inspector that the farmers possibly were sold the ester, maybe not aware it was an ester and different from what they had been using, because of a possible shortage of the regular stuff.
Idk.
On the bright side, business will be booming for all the local nurserymen should everything die off as a result of the farmers spraying.
Well I have not checked in to the thread in a good long while as I knew it would take all types of wild turns with unbelievable accusations., it did. I predict in the end the entire issue will settle out with a fizzle and no one will be happy.
Well on a related note I am off to spray along the neighbors fence with a mix of Dicamba, Glyphosate, Triclopyr, and the old standard 2-4-D. Gotta hit those places I missed with Picloram. Wish I had some ole Atrazine, Bladex, or others to hit the tilled ground
Well on a related note I am off to spray along the neighbors fence with a mix of Dicamba, Glyphosate, Triclopyr, and the old standard 2-4-D. Gotta hit those places I missed with Picloram. Wish I had some ole Atrazine, Bladex, or others to hit the tilled ground
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