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Demand that the EPA Reject Syngenta’s Dicamba Application
& Ban the Carcinogenic Herbicide Once and For All!
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THIRD TIME'S A CHARM? Not if we can help it.
In the last several months, we alerted you to Bayer-Monsanto and BASF’s new requests for EPA approval of dicamba herbicide. These “new use” applications by the companies come on the heels of two federal court orders to ban dicamba.
Now, Syngenta, the third chemical corporation producing dicamba, is also asking the EPA to rubber-stamp their “new use” application. Syngenta, like Bayer-Monsanto and BASF, is trying to circumvent the court-ordered bans by submitting “new use” applications to the EPA.
Dicamba is a carcinogenic, ultra-volatile herbicide that can drift for miles beyond its area of direct application. No label changes or re-formulations will change this. Eight years of dicamba use on dicamba-tolerant GMO crops show us there is no way to use this toxic herbicide without causing immeasurable collateral damage and harm.
Unless you raise your voice, the EPA may, once again, bend to Syngenta, BASF and Bayer-Monsanto. Tell the EPA: Not only must the Agency reject Syngenta’s application, but dicamba must be banned outright once and for all.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Dicamba is a highly toxic, volatile, and drift-prone herbicide known to be able to spread for miles beyond its area of application, killing or damaging all vegetation in its path. The herbicide is so volatile that it has the potential to re-aerosolize and drift days after its application in certain weather conditions, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to track back to the source.
GMO farmers’ reliance and overuse of glyphosate on GMO glyphosate-tolerant crops since the mid-1990s has caused weeds to evolve resistance to the herbicide. These “superweeds” can't be killed with glyphosate. So Monsanto developed new GMO crops able to tolerate over-the-top spraying of both glyphosate and dicamba.
The USDA deregulated Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton seeds in 2015.
In 2016, the EPA approved certain dicamba formulations for over-the-top spraying on Monsanto’s GMO soy and cotton. Despite the sounding of alarm bells by some farmers and environmental groups like GMO/Toxin Free USA, EPA gave these dicamba formulations the rubber stamp.
Since EPA’s approval, each year dicamba drift has been responsible for damaging or destroying many millions of acres of non-GMO soy, cotton and other food crops like sugar beets, rice, sweet potatoes, peanuts, peaches, tomatoes, grapes and more, harming the livelihoods of non-GMO and organic farmers, and even GMO farmers who didn’t want to buy the new, expensive seeds. Dicamba drift has also caused widespread damage to oak trees, home gardens and landscape plantings.
And to add insult to injury, the USDA does zero testing of food crops for dicamba contamination. So we also don’t know how much of this chemical is entering into people’s diets. And studies show that it can cause cancer that manifests nearly 20 years after exposure.
In South Dakota, Little Shire Farm, an organic farm run by John and Lisa Zuhlke, was devastated multiple times over multiple years by dicamba drift. “We got completely wiped out. We had to stop production. All of our CSA shares, community-supported agriculture shares-gone; farmers markets–gone.”
Richard Coy was forced to shut down Coy’s Honey Farm in Arkansas, the largest family-operated beekeeping operation in the state, and move it to Mississippi. Dicamba drift damaged the vegetation his bees depended on to live, and also resulted in “undesirable product.” "It's very emotional, but you can't let emotions get in the way of business decisions, and the best business decision is to not go broke,” said Coy.
Bader Farms, the largest peach orchard in Missouri, reported 1,000 acres of peaches damaged by dicamba drift over multiple years. Bill Bader’s peach farm was put out of business.
These are only a few of the thousands of cases of farms devastated by dicamba. Read more about Little Shire Farm, Coy’s Honey Farm, Bader Farms, and more.
Dicamba drift damaged an estimated 5 million acres of crops, trees and backyard gardens between 2016 and 2017 alone. Despite the massive reports of drift damage, in 2018 the EPA re-approved and expanded its use.
In 2020, a National Institutes of Health study, published in the journal International Journal of Epidemiology, found that the use of dicamba can increase the risk of developing numerous cancers, including liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancers, acute and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and mantle cell lymphoma which may manifest up to 20 years after exposure. With dicamba’s ability to drift for miles, people in many areas of the country are now routinely forced to breathe in this dangerous chemical.
In July of the same year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated EPA’s registration of dicamba. But the Trump administration ignored the court order and re-registered dicamba through 2025.
In 2021, the EPA introduced minimal restrictions on dicamba use to address the drift issues. But by the Agency’s own admission, this did nothing to reduce dicamba drift damage. EPA’s own data shows dicamba has harmed thousands of farmers to date. The Agency’s December 2021 report states that these numbers are likely an undercount by 25 times.
Through the 2022 and 2023 growing seasons, it was the same song, different verse. With EPA’s inaction, more damage and health harms were documented across America.
“I would like everyone to contact the EPA… If we can get enough people to rise up and say ‘enough is enough, we don’t want to poison our food’, maybe we can get something changed,” said beekeeper Richard Coy.
On February 6, 2024, the U.S. District Court of Arizona overturned the 2020 dicamba registrations that allowed over-the-top applications of three dicamba products, Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and Syngenta’s Tavium. The second court order in four years!
Yet now, the Biden EPA is considering applications from Bayer-Monsanto, BASF and Syngenta to register new dicamba formulations. Will the EPA collude with chemical corporations to perpetuate a scam on Americans, again?
After eight years of devastation caused by dicamba use, there is a single sane conclusion: The only way to use dicamba safely is to not use it at all. Demand that the EPA reject Syngenta’s new dicamba application. And demand that the EPA ban dicamba once and for all.
TAKE ACTION TODAY TO PROTECT FARMERS LIKE JOHN AND LISA ZUHLKE FROM FUTURE DICAMBA DAMAGE.
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