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But farmers couldn’t make widespread applications of these herbicides during the growing season because they would kill crops like soybeans and cotton.
In order to combat this problem, agribusiness companies like Bayer, formerly Monsanto, and Corteva, formerly DowDuPont, have released new crops genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by these herbicides.
Bayer’s Xtend system, which is resistant to dicamba, has become widely adopted since it was fully rolled out in 2017, being planted across
50 million acres of soybeans in 2020, or about two out of three soybeans planted in the US. Bayer and BASF, which are both headquartered in Germany, have the highest market shares of dicamba herbicide.
Since 2017, millions of acres of non-resistant crops have been damaged by dicamba, according to experts.
Bayer did not respond to a request for an interview for this story. However, in the past, the company has maintained that dicamba is safe when used according to its label and that off-target movement is unrelated to Bayer’s product.
Earlier this year, Bader was
awarded $265 million by a federal jury in a lawsuit against Bayer and BASF where he claimed his peach orchard was no longer viable because of repeated damage from dicamba. Hundreds of other farmers have filed similar lawsuits, and many have the ability to become class action suits. The damage is also happening at nurseries and other speciality farms, experts said.
This year, Corteva’s Enlist system, which is resistant to 2,4-D, is expected to make up 20 percent of the soybean crop.
Oak trees exposed to herbicides like these documented by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources die slowly, with signs of damage visible in the foliage.
‘Don’t think you can get away from this’
But both herbicides are much more volatile than glyphosate. In the hours and days after the herbicides are sprayed, small amounts of the weed killer vaporize, turning into a gas and then move off the field.
Much of the damage is happening at the landscape level, which indicates volatility is likely at play through a phenomenon called atmospheric loading – when so many farmers are spraying so much herbicide at the same time that the chemicals build up to levels so high they are unable to dissipate and escape the atmosphere. The weed killer persists in the air for hours or even days, moving around by the wind and poisoning whatever it comes into contact with.
The pesticide can travel for miles, onto other crops, into towns and even into natural areas, said Marty Kemper, a retired biologist with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. Kemper has been working with Prairie Rivers Network to document damage in southern Illinois, where he lives, and said trees just aren’t as healthy as they were five or six years ago.
“Don’t think you can get away from this by being inside the city limits,” Kemper said. “My observations are you can’t go anywhere in these small towns around here to not see some level of injury in these communities. For the last two years, I haven’t seen personally, a redbud in the town that I live in that didn’t show some level of exposure.”
In response to widespread inquiries about the damage, Ball organized a survey of forest health specialists to see if they could figure out how widespread the damage was. The group found significant damage from growth regulator herbicides in Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota. Lab samples confirmed that 2,4-D was the most common pesticide detected, and dicamba was present in about 90 percent of samples. For example, in all of Nebraska’s 78 samples, leaves had detectable levels of dicamba and 2,4-D, Stepanek said.
The extent of the damage, as well as its long-term effects, is not known, Ball said. But widespread damage clearly happens throughout the growing season. Stepanek said she is most concerned about long-term chronic exposure year after year. Already, some trees are “just not growing very well.”
Lou Nelms, a retired biologist and former nursery owner who has documented tree injury in central Illinois for five straight years, has been finding injured sycamore trees in the middle of downtown areas across central Illinois, as far as a mile and a half from the closest crops. Lab samples confirmed dicamba was present.
Nelms can rattle off each of the places: near the public library in Clinton; outside of the Adams Wildlife Sanctuary in Springfield, right in front of the courthouse in Petersburg; at the large public park in Pekin; at Kickapoo Creek Park in Logan County; and at the Postville Courthouse in Lincoln.
“It’s a pretty good tell tale of just how far the dicamba gases have moved,” Nelms said.
Bill Freese, a science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety, a nonprofit organization focused on human health and pesticides, said the effects could go beyond tree health to humans. Freese said his main concern about the spread of dicamba for humans is cancer.
Freese has submitted comments to the EPA and USDA about links between cancer and dicamba, though the agencies have not connected dicamba to cancer. A
study released by the National Institutes of Health in May found that pesticide applicators who sprayed dicamba were more likely to develop certain types of cancer than pesticide applicators who did not spray dicamba.
2,4-D is considered a “possible human carcinogen” by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. Studies have also linked 2,4-D to endocrine disruption, disturbing estrogen, androgen and thyroid hormones.
It sure hit me that way.
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My Magnificent Buckeye! 
