By TYLER GRAEF
SEMO News Service
The Missouri Department of Agriculture issued a moratorium on all use and sale of Dicamba products Friday afternoon.
The order, effective immediately, seeks to address pesticide drift, which allegedly has damaged thousands of acres of crops in Missouri and surrounding states, according to a news release.
So far this year, the Bureau of Pesticide Control has received more than 130 pesticide-drift complaints.
"We want to protect farmers and their livelihoods," said director of Agriculture Chris Chinn in the release. "At the same time, my commitment to technology and innovation in agriculture is unwavering. That's why I am asking the makers of these approved post-emergent products, researchers and farmers to work with us to determine how we can allow applications to resume this growing season, under certain agreed-upon conditions."
Dicamba pesticides are effective at controlling weeds resistant to other pesticides, and are thereby a boon farmers who plant Dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybean seeds. The problem in recent years, however, has come when Dicamba compounds drift onto ajacent fields where they can damage crops not designed to handle Dicamba. Disputes over Dicamba and damage from pesticide drift have played a role in the homicide of a farmer, when Allan Curtis Jones of Arbyrd, Missouri, was charged in the death of Mike Wallace, of Manila, Arkansas, in October; several regulatory bills proposed in the Missouri Legislature; and a lawsuit filed by Missouri's largest peach producer against St. Louis-based Monsanto.