Holly Dressel
This past June, a U.S. federal court found the weed-killer dicamba illegal to use in the United States. A broad-spectrum herbicide used in tandem with herbicide-resistant, genetically engineered seeds of corn and soy, dicamba is widely employed in Canada, including here in the Chateauguay Valley. Back in 2014, a document by Health Canada stated that “between 500,000 and 1 million kilograms of dicamba, its amine salt or its butoxyethyl ester are sold annually in Canada.” (Beyond agricultural use, dicamba is also an ingredient in some lawn treatments.)
In the recent U.S. case, the 9th circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, “Citing unprecedented drift damage to millions of acres,” referred in its 56-page official verdict (which was challenged but upheld again in August) to the “enormous and unprecedented damage” caused by dicamba in the last few years, damage that has “torn apart the social fabric of many farming communities.” There are hundreds of legal cases pending, of farmers whose crops have been damaged by the “volatility” of dicamba combinations, that is, their ability to be taken up by wind and weather to kill or harm crops in neighbouring fields. The largest peach farm in Georgia was destroyed this way, but even other corn and soy crops suffer, lacking resistance to the herbicide. Here in the Chateauguay Valley, something similar is starting to happen.
It must be established that the particular ‘seed system’ using resistant seeds and the herbicide dicamba, especially in concert with the now strongly implicated carcinogen glyphosate (Roundup), is a relative newcomer. Dicamba itself had been used since the 1940s to clear weeds in late fall or early winter only, when its well-known volatility (spray drift) couldn’t impact neighbouring crops. But in 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved new dicamba mixtures and directives developed by BASF/Monsanto, to be used with crops genetically engineered to be resistant to these herbicides. The directives claimed the volatility had been reduced and it could be sprayed even in warm spring and summer weather when the corn and soy fields it’s used on are surrounded by other crops. Health Canada joined in with approvals, although so far our agencies have stayed silent on this summer’s U.S. ban.
By mid-July of only its second season of use in the U.S., more than 600 cases of dicamba/Roundup damage, on 1.1 million acres, were under investigation. Here in Canada, it is harder to litigate and also harder to access data; but in the Chateauguay Valley, 8 million bees perished in June, and the court cases in the wake of this event that decimated the hives of our area’s largest honey producer are arguing this is due to spraying with these formulations in windy, warm weather. Joel Laberge of Miellerie St-Stanislas, whose honey crop this year, also suffering from drought, is, not surprisingly, far less than normal, says, “There will be a honey shortage for sure in Quebec, probably more coming in from western Canada.” It could have been a good year instead of a horrible one for him. “There’s lots of demand for honey, because of the virus; as with a cold, people want to treat with it.”
Laberge echoes almost all the farmers in litigation against dicamba spray drift in saying he doesn’t want to sue the neighbour against whom he has the clearest evidence (there were others spraying in the high wind that day as well). But he has little choice. With laboratory samples and witnesses, there is a now civil suit pending, filed by his son, and a penal one by MAPAQ, Quebec’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food. “Those will impact the industry. It’s important, it will give control of these products a precedent in jurisprudence,” Laberge says, adding that he “wants there to be a future for beekeepers and for bees.”
If this seems like pitting fruit growers, organic farmers and beekeepers against large grain farmers, it’s not that simple. Grain farmers are also in a bind. As many opponents of genetically modified crops noted decades ago, the weeds supposedly suppressed by chemical herbicides have often come back as “super-weeds,” resistant to the earlier, “milder” chemicals (despite the evidence indicating many lymphomas in users, Roundup is classified this way). Dicamba and other once-banned, now-revived chemicals like 2,4-D (a component of Agent Orange implicated in many health issues) are now being developed and sold with seeds treated to resist them to combat the water hemp, Palmer amaranth and mares’ tail that learned to fight these chemicals. This cycle will repeat, so the developers, BASF/Monsanto, have in the works 12 products that escalate in toxicity to pair with ever-more resistant corn and soy.
The Health Canada directives, followed by Quebec regulatory agencies such as MAPAQ, echo the developers in saying the new dicamba preparations, like Xtend, are “safe when used properly.” But as revealed in internal emails made public in an article in The Guardian last March, BASF/Monsanto fully realized that because dicamba had been used for decades in different formulations and in different seasons, many farmers would simply apply their old practices to these new, early summer spraying regimes — with potentially disastrous effects on the crops and pollinators around them. Corn and soy farmers also have a short window for spring field treatment following seeding, so they’re rushed; many don’t even apply the chemicals themselves, contracting this out to professional sprayers. In that situation, a contractor with X number of farms to do by a certain date may not want to let a wind get in the way of emptying his tank. He may also not be in direct contact with an agronomist and not understand all the label implications.
Monsanto/BASF knew all this would happen. The Guardian article revealed that a report prepared for Monsanto as early as 2009 expected such “off-target” movement of their new dicamba/Roundup blends, causing “crop loss,” “lawsuits,” and “negative press around pesticides.” With their hundreds of billions in annual profits, they merely allocated a fund to handle that. What excited them far more were the new profits and also the fact that spray drift brings new clients. Neighbours start using this seed system so their own crops won’t be poisoned by the dicamba being sprayed next door.
Tremendous effort was expended by BASF/Monsanto to prevent independent testing of these products and also to convince regulatory agencies of their safety. Daniel Green, deputy head of the Green Party of Canada, renowned for his decades of work on toxic contamination in Quebec, says that, “Once a pesticide is registered in Canada, it’s very hard to de-register it. The amount of evidence that has to be brought forward means a lot of people will be hurt in the interim.” So why was it approved in the first place? Green says, “Clearly Canada has been lax in its followup of effects after registration.” As were other levels of protection.
The Gleaner attempted to contact some local agronomists but was unsuccessful as of press time. The Ordre des Agronomes du Québec was in a controversy involving pesticides just last year, when whistleblower Louis Robert was fired by MAPAQ for going public with evidence that similar pesticide-treated seeds (in that case, bee-toxic neonics), were unneeded in 95 per cent of cases where Quebec agronomists were recommending them. There was further evidence that a system of “bonuses and commissions” to their salaries was driving recommendations of such use. (Robert was later reinstated.)
In the dicamba seed case, Joel Laberge says, “Don’t tell me the agronomists checked on that, at all 1,200 farms around here, analyzing, and saying they really needed these treated seeds.” He hopes that, if there is to be a future for mixed farming, “Farmers will be much more conscious and conscientious about what they put in the ground.”