“Make America Healthy Again” advocates are slamming EPA over its reapproval of a weedkiller deemed controversial due to its cancer risks and tendency to drift onto neighboring farms, killing crops.
The agency announced Friday afternoon it would continue to allow farmers to use dicamba for another two years but under stricter conditions of use.
To EPA, it’s a decision that “responds directly to the strong advocacy of America’s cotton and soybean farmers,” the agency said in a news release.
To Zen Honeycutt, founding executive director of Moms Across America, it’s an example of “what happens when the EPA allows itself to be pressured by corporations and by business.”
“Approving dicamba is not ‘Make America Healthy Again,'” Honeycutt said.
Federal court judges tossed EPA’s previous two attempts to register dicamba for “over-the-top” use — as opposed to applying it before crops have emerged — siding with environmental health groups that sued over a lack of safety precautions.
EPA in the news release recognized “the ecological risks associated with dicamba drift and volatility are real,” and “previous drift issues created legitimate concerns.” But it says these new label requirements — which include halving the annual dicamba amounts allowed and restricting the height at which it can be sprayed — are “the strongest protections in agency history.”
“When applied according to the new label instructions, EPA’s analysis found no unreasonable risk to human health and the environment from OTT [over-the-top] dicamba use,” the agency said.
Honeycutt acknowledged EPA put “a lot of restrictions on it” but said it still “shouldn’t be used at all.”
Kelly Ryerson, a MAHA influencer who leads the nonprofit American Regeneration, also has doubts.
“It really doesn’t make that much of a difference at all in terms of use,” Ryerson said. “It’s really a short-term Band-Aid to a problem that just is much larger than dicamba, or any of this.”
‘Captured by the chemical industry’?
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has pledged to work with Ryerson and other advocates behind Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health movement. MAHA’s anti-corporate supporters, however, have bristled at the agency’s pesticide-friendly rules and hiring decisions.
Kyle Kunkler joined as deputy assistant administrator in EPA’s chemicals office last summer after five years as a lobbyist for the American Soybean Association, a strong dicamba defender.
“It’s such an inherent conflict of interest,” Ryerson said, and “proof that the EPA continues to be captured by the chemical industry.”
Dicamba manufacturer Bayer Crop Science announced the agency’s registration enables the company to launch Stryax, a restricted-use dicamba herbicide.
EPA’s approval marks the latest chapter for a farm chemical that’s been in use since the late 1960s but became more divisive after 2016, when Monsanto introduced genetically engineered crops that could withstand it.
Prior to that, farmers used dicamba mainly on weeds that sprouted before the main crop had emerged from the ground. With Monsanto’s newly engineered soybeans and cotton, over-the-top use on crops already growing became common, particularly for soybeans and cotton.
Bayer later acquired Monsanto.
Dicamba is known for its volatility, meaning it’s easily blown into neighboring fields or escapes targeted crops through runoff. During the next several years, reports of non-genetically engineered crops being damaged or killed by dicamba proliferated to the point where millions of acres of soybeans and cotton were lost.
In 2024, a federal court in Arizona overturned EPA’s 2020 approval of over-the-top use for dicamba, in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Food Safety and others. Senior District Judge David Bury agreed with the plaintiffs that EPA had shirked its responsibility to take and consider public comment.
Although some researchers have linked dicamba to certain cancers, the human health effects weren’t the basis of the court’s action.
Surveys by the Association of American Pesticide Control Officials revealed 1,482 reported complaints of off-target impacts from dicamba — including drift, runoff and unknown causes — in 2021. The number fell to 819 in 2022, according to the survey, with most in states including Iowa, Illinois and Indiana. EPA reported still-higher numbers from its own monitoring in the few preceding years.
One million acres were affected in 2022 alone, according to the survey.
‘Enforceable mandates’
Environmental groups said attempts to reduce the risk haven’t been successful enough and that ending over-the-top use is the only effective solution.
The Center for Food Safety said the continued use of dicamba is a danger to farm country.
“The Trump administration’s hostility to farmers and rural America knows no bounds,” said Bill Freese, the CFS’s science director, in a news release. “Dicamba drift damage threatens farmers’ livelihoods and tears apart rural communities.”
EPA repeatedly acknowledged in its announcement those troubles with dicamba — including the conflict it sows in farming communities — and said the mitigation measures would address them without banning its use.
Those include cutting in half the amount of dicamba allowed to be used annually per acre and requiring that every tank of the chemical be mixed with a compound that makes the droplets bigger, meaning they’re less likely to be blown away.
The agency also emphasized that the pesticide label instructions, as always, are legal requirements.
“Americans’ concerns about environmental and health impacts are valid. If not carefully protected against, OTT dicamba drift can harm neighboring farms, damage sensitive plants, and impact wildlife and pollinators,” EPA said.
The agency added, “These aren’t suggestions or guidelines, they’re enforceable mandates with real consequences for those who violate them.”
In addition, farmers will have to use conservation practices such as reduced tillage or cover crops on every field on which dicamba is used — practices that otherwise are voluntary — and the measures will have to be stepped up in areas with endangered species, EPA said.
Commodity groups for cotton and soybeans praised EPA’s decision to allow over-the-top use again, without specifically addressing the off-target damage farmers have experienced.
The American Soybean Association said the decision comes as farmers are making purchase decisions for the coming growing season.
“Farmers need clear, workable rules that accurately reflect how we farm,” said ASA President Scott Metzger, an Ohio farmer. “We look forward to reviewing the final label and hope it incorporates the feedback ASA and its state affiliates provided to ensure dicamba remains a practical option within a responsible, science-based weed management system.”
The National Cotton Council, which represents growers, processors and manufacturers, said it encourages farmers to follow the label requirements.
The cotton group’s chair, Patrick Johnson, said in a statement: “EPA’s decision provides growers much-needed clarity as they prepare for the upcoming growing season. We support label requirements that are workable in the field and backed by a science-based registration process.”
Neither producer group immediately returned messages Monday seeking comment on the effects of off-target dicamba drift on farmers who are members.
