
A backlash against the herbicide Dicamba - a_w
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/this-miracle-weed-killer-was-supposed-to-save-farms-instead-its-devastating-them/2017/08/29/33a21a56-88e3-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html
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flyGuyOnTheSly
This situation is a result of small farm consolidation and commoditization
imho.

My grandfather was a small farmer.

He farmed about 120 acres in his retirement when I knew him and it was enough
to keep his family well fed and well funded until the day he died.

He knew everybody in town. He went to all the farm shows. He bought the best
animal breeds he could find and had a whole host of different animals, fruits,
vegetables and legumes living happily on his farm at any given time.

Cows, chickens, ducks, wheat, peaches, onions, etc.

I remember he used to feed ground up eggshells to his chickens because he
swore it made the strongest egg shells which could be shipped into town
unscathed.

He fertilized his fields with manure.

And when a crop was lost to locusts... he didn't spray the entire field with
insecticide.

He invited me out into the crops with a torch and we burnt it all down to the
ground in order to kill off their eggs.

He lived where he farmed.

I couldn't imagine him ever agreeing to use the world's most dangerous
herbicide in order to grow a crop that did not want to be grown where his farm
was located.

What would his neighbours think? Where would his livelihood come from if he
somehow poisoned his land?

Nowadays when most farms are 10,000+ acres in size and overseen by absentee
landlords... I'm not surprised in the slightest that they are tossing around
dangerous chemicals like candy without a care in the world.

Shame on them. And RIP Grandpa ;)

~~~
ajross
The techniques your grandfather was using would have (and likely did) leave
him at a terrible competitive disadvantage when trying to compete with those
megafarms growing the same crops.

It's good to remember the past, but don't sugarcoat things either. Modern
techniques grow more food, more cheaply, with lower economic footprint, less
land used per output, less energy spent per calorie, etc...

And sometimes they mess up and poison soybeans, which sucks. But feeding
chickens eggshells isn't the fix you want.

~~~
flyGuyOnTheSly
>Modern techniques grow more food, more cheaply, with lower economic
footprint, less land used per output, less energy spent per calorie, etc...

Right now, that is true.

But what happens when Dicamba stops working?

What happens when the next Dicamba stops working?

We will be forced to return to the old ways of farming eventually whether we
like it or not.

And by old ways I'm talking about polyculture and basically just growing
what's right for your region.

~~~
lqdc13
> Right now that is true

It isn't though.

> lower economic footprint, less land used per output, less energy spent per
> calorie

Small farms are actually a lot more efficient than large farms in everything
but man-hours.

Think about it like this: If you had a 10 meters by 10 meters garden vs
someone who had a 1km x 1km field. You would make sure every square cm in your
garden is irrigated properly, that no insects are munching on your plants and
each plant has the right amount of space and correct soil treatment for
maximum yield. On a large farm, you cannot possibly do that. The total yield
is a lot higher but the plants are not as healthy and are not living under
optimal conditions.

------
rmason
A lot of you on here from previous comments know that I spent 20+ years as a
fertilizer agronomist before changing careers.

Drift is the scariest thing out there to a commercial applicator. We had well
trained drivers, took them out of the field when the winds came up. But
there's pressure to spray all the fields in a 4-5 week window and you'd always
lose days to rain. We didn't have drift cases every year but it was impossible
to avoid.

I got burned early with Dicamba and refused to spray it under any conditions
when soybeans or other susceptible crops were out of the ground nearby.

Heard about its new formulation and talked with a buddy about it. He said that
they'd licked the problems with drift. I said have you seen it demonstrated in
fields in your area? He said no, I said have you ever had a chemical rep
stretch the truth about the capabilities of a new formulation? We had a good
mutual laugh about that one.

This was a preventable tragedy.

------
iamnotlarry
Monsanto has waged war against independent farmers for years. If your neighbor
planted Monsanto seeds and they germinated into your crop, Monsanto sues you
for stealing their IP. They now own your crops because your crops contain
their intellectual property.

This is not a joke. Monsanto has sued hundreds and hundreds of farmers and
driven them out of business.

Farmers who have worked hard to keep Monsanto's IP out of their fields are at
a serious disadvantage in crop yields.

But now there's a new twist. It isn't pollen and germination agents drifting
on the wind this time. It's deadly herbicide. This time, the contamination
doesn't benefit the neighbors; it kills them. Well, first it kills their
crops. If only those hundreds of farmers were still around to turn the tables
on Monsanto. Too bad there aren't hundreds and hundreds of family farms that
could each take a multi-million dollar chunk out of Monsanto.

Maybe we can take advantage of this moment to adjust the rules. If your
intellectual property blows through the wind and contaminates your neighbors,
you should be liable, not them. That should be true whether the IP kills their
crops or whether it increases their crop yields. In all cases, they should not
be liable--you should.

~~~
tom_mellior
> If your intellectual property blows through the wind and contaminates your
> neighbors, you should be liable, not them.

More importantly, seeds should not be considered as intellectual property. In
particular, it's ridiculous that you are not allowed to replant seeds from
your harvest.

~~~
gruez
>More importantly, seeds should not be considered as intellectual property

why? Most farmers do not replant their seeds (wouldn't work because the seeds
are hybrids). do you oppose patenting lifeforms on principle?

~~~
tom_mellior
> Most farmers do not replant their seeds

And many do, for seeds where it works.

> do you oppose patenting lifeforms on principle?

I oppose applying patents in a way that violates a "first sale doctrine" kind
of thing. That is, once you have sold me seeds, they should be _my_ property,
and you should not have a say in how I use them. (Edited to add: Even if, yes,
in a certain deliberately technical sense, the DNA in those seeds amounts to
"derivative works" or "copies" of the DNA contained in what you sold me.)

If that makes patents on lifeforms worthless, that's fine with me. But no, "no
patents on lifeforms" is not the principle I start from.

------
vollmarj
Like most problems at this scale, this is a complex issue with many causes.

First off, Dicamba is not a new herbicide. We've had it for many years and
knew the challenges associated with it. Most farms didn't need to use it
because glyphosate (aka Roundup) was just as effective and far easier to use
thanks to Monsanto developing the compatible GMO seed over 20 years ago. Since
then, two things have changed: roundup is off patent (so Monsanto's profits
are being challenged) and many common weeds have developed their own
resistance to the glyphosate mode of action.

This leads Monsanto searching for a new product they can sell, and farmers
searching for a more effective herbicide they can use. Pressure from both
sides.

Monsanto and the other chemical companies have a powerful lobby. They told the
EPA that this new formulation of Dicamba was less prone to drift and somehow
got that through without much field testing.

The drift issue is a great thing for the chemical/seed companies if they can
keep the product approved for use. Here is why: everyone will have to buy
their GMO seed. Not even because they want to use the Dicamba product, but
because the need the resistant seed as insurance against damage from their
neighbor. There is a LOT of profit on the line for Monsanto and Dow/Dupont and
unfortunately they have the ears of the regulators and they have great
influence over the "independent" farmer lobby (American Farm Bureau).

I'd like to propose that consolidation of farms is not driving this issue, but
rather consolidation of seed and chemical companies. We have a massive
oligopoly in the seed and chemical industry and it is only getting worse as
the "Big 6" are becoming the Big 3 through M&A (Bayer/Monsanto, Dow/Dupont,
Syngenta/ChemChina).

About me: My family has been farming for 6 generations, my dad, uncle, and
brother all actively farm and I am the founder of FarmLogs (YCW12).

~~~
hedora
I wonder if removing patent protection for herbicide resistance genes would
slow this cycle down.

At the very least, it would make it more difficult for monsanto to sue organic
farmers because monsanto gmos contaminated the organic crop.

------
ars
Summary: The herbicide dicamba can evaporate from where it was applied and
drift to nearby fields harming plants that are not resistant to it.

This is causing a disaster for those farmers, and an ecological problem in
general.

The manufacturer claims the new dicamba is less like to evaporate and the
problems are from farmers using old stocks. Others don't agree. Lots of noise
and wind, little hard data - (the lack of data it itself part of the problem).

~~~
hedora
20M acres of dicamba soybeans have been planted, and it is well documented
that drift damaged at least 4M acres of non-dicamba soybeans.

The 4M is a lower bound. It is also known that dicamba drift is killing other
crops and wild plants, but there is no tracking of acrage for that other (also
definately large) die off.

Also, the scope of damage spiked with the introduction of new dicamba.

How is this not hard evidence?

------
DrScump
This new dicamba formulation was quietly approved by the Obama administration
right after the election.

[https://www.rt.com/usa/366812-epa-monsanto-dicamba-
herbicide...](https://www.rt.com/usa/366812-epa-monsanto-dicamba-herbicide/)

------
mjevans
The best way to avoid weeds...

Hydroponics inside of greenhouses farmed by robots.

Ultimately that's just costly, but the shortest path to reducing that cost is
more affordable energy.

Until we get to sealed greenhouses maybe exotic solutions like poison
resistant Genetically Modified (Organisms?) should be avoided as food and
industrial sources.

~~~
King-Aaron
I'd rebuff your hydroponics idea, and add that it's worth considering
aquaponics. You drastically reduce the amount of growth and nutrient
additives, as the system becomes effectively a closed-loop with fish (and
aerobic bacteria in the growing medium) creating the nutrients required.

Setup costs are generally large, but aquaponics scale very well.

~~~
roel_v
So, if such a system is feasible and profitable (at scale), where are the
farms that are killing off 'traditional' farms left and right?

I'll tell you where all the aquaponics farms are: in bankruptcy court, because
very few of them have managed to figure out how to make this system work at a
scale bigger than home production, and even less how to do so while still
being economically competitive. It's not a coincidence that most tilapia
production is not in aquaponics farms. And it's not like it hasn't been tried;
people try to do so every day and have been doing so for 30. But saying "but
aquaponics scale very well." just screams 'I read some blog posts about this
so now I know they scale well', because the technology simply isn't there.

~~~
King-Aaron
I've been running aquaponics on a hobby farm scale for more than a few years
now, but thanks.

~~~
roel_v
Also, it's unlikely anyone will ever still see this, but coincidentally this
research paper came out a few days ago about this exact issue:
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144860917...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144860917300821)
.

------
Khol
Related story:

[http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?story...](http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=531272125)

------
watertorock
I hate headlines like this.

Remember when headlines used to be informative rather than trying to get you
to click?

~~~
nickysielicki
What's dishonest about it?

~~~
ec109685
It is also saving farms too:

Critics say that the approval process proceeded without adequate data and
under enormous pressure from state agriculture departments, industry groups
and farmers associations. Those groups said that farmers _desperately_ needed
the new herbicide to control glyphosate-resistant weeds, which can take over
fields and deprive soybeans of sunlight and nutrients

\--

So a more honest headline would be:

"This miracle weed killer is saving farms as well as sometime devastating
their neighbors"

~~~
TheAdamAndChe
The primary focus of the post is the negative effects of the pesticide that
was allowed through _because_ it was able to be pushed through the typical
protocols. It's a breakdown of the very regulation meant to protect people.

> A better title would be: "This miracle weed killer is saving farms as well
> as sometime devastating their neighbors"

Maybe the intent of cramming this pesticide to market was to save farms, but
perhaps doing so was a bit hasty. Should we prioritize profits over healthcare
and safety?

