By Richelle Wilson
Last week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reapproved the herbicide dicamba for top-application use on soybean and cotton crops after it was banned by federal court orders first in 2020 and again in 2024.
The Wisconsin Soybean Association has joined its national organization in backing the reapproval, after another difficult year for soybean growers in the state. But scientists and environmental advocates have questioned the decision, given the product’s track record of causing damage to plants, wildlife and other crops.
The latest reapproval comes after years of back-and-forth between the EPA and the federal courts over dicamba.
“What we’ve seen from dicamba the last decade — there’s no other example of herbicide or pesticide that has gone through this on-again, off-again situation,” Otto Oemig, a pesticide supervisor with the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today.”
Dicamba is a weed killer that farmers use on soybean, corn and cotton plants that have been genetically modified to tolerate it. For these growers, dicamba has been a game-changer in controlling weeds like Palmer amaranth and waterhemp that have become resistant to other common herbicides like glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup.
“The waterhemp has floated up from the south the last two, three years, becoming a problem that’s hard to control in beans,” said Craig Myhre, a farmer who grows soybeans in Osseo. “Those weeds are becoming Roundup-resistant, and we had to come up with a different mode of action to control them.”
But dicamba is prone to drifting from the field it was applied to, causing widespread damage to trees, backyard gardens and organic crops. It is the subject of hundreds of lawsuits and thousands of complaints around the country.
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