January 14, 2019 at 10:07 pm









States are standing up to protect us against Monsanto’s new herbicide dicamba, since EPA won’t









When weeds started becoming resistant to Monsanto’s infamous Roundup herbicide, the company came out with a new more powerful, and perhaps more destructive, herbicide called XtendiMax.

Since the EPA approved the herbicide’s main ingredient, dicamba, in 2016, millions of acres of crops have been destroyed by the chemical.

That’s because, similar to Roundup-Ready crops, crops must be specifically genetically engineered to withstand dicamba. Such crops are called dicamba-tolerant crops.

So far 40 million acres of genetically modified soybeans and cotton have been sprayed with the chemical. This number is expected to reach 90 million by 2020.

Because dicamba is particularly prone to drift, it has spread onto neighboring organic or non-GMO farms and destroyed their crops.

Dicamba drift has already led to thousands of complaints and dozens of lawsuits by farmers nationwide.

Because of this, Minnesota just joined four other states in restricting the use of the chemical for the 2019 growing season.

The decision follows 253 complaints of dicamba drift in 2017, impacting a total of 265,000 acres.

After state restrictions were put in place for the 2018 growing season, the number of complaints of “dicamba drift” dropped dramatically to 53, affecting only 1,800 acres.

Tennessee achieved similar results after becoming the fourth state to restrict the use of dicamba a year and a half ago.

This year’s tougher restrictions — including a shorter spraying season and greater buffers around non-GMO crops — are expected to reduce crop damage even further.

Although essentially no studies or tests were conducted to prove the safety of dicamba before the EPA approved it, there is already at least one study linking dicamba to lung and colon cancer, and another study linking it to non-Hodgkis lymphoma.











