Dr. Larry Steckel, a weed scientist from Tennessee with 30+ years experience working with farmers on pesticide issues, has written a thoughtful piece in the Delta Farm Press about the ongoing dicamba-drift crisis. Steckel is quoted in our Dicamba Watch dynamic presentation and has been an important voice throughout this crisis, now in its third year. […]
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In February, 11 dicamba drift and crop damage lawsuits were consolidated into a federal multi-district litigation (MDL), and transferred to the U.S. District Court in Missouri. These cases represent the first flush of lawsuits related to the dicamba-drift-damage crisis of 2016-2017. The cases have been filed by farmers from Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, and Missouri. Dicamba-resistant […]
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As we have covered extensively here on Hygeia, the introduction of dicamba-tolerant soybeans in 2016 also triggered an unprecendented spike in herbicide-drift damage reports and associated litigation. Millions of acres were damaged in 2016 and 2017 by drifting dicamba. Both the EPA and affected states established stricter rules in an effort to prevent further impacts. We […]
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Few people engaged today in the important debates over regulation of agricultural biotechnology know or remember much about the critical debates that unfolded when the gen-one wave of ag biotechnologies first hit the beach. Today, as CRISPR-driven, largely untested technology rolls on shore, attention to lessons learned in the past (but thus far unheeded) might […]
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In an in-depth piece that ran in The Oregonian and online at Oregon Live, writer Julia Rosen with High Country News tells the sorry tale of how glyphosate resistant creeping bentgrass meant for high-dollar golf courses has become a thorn in the side of high-desert farmers and ranchers along the Oregon-Washington-Idaho border. Starting in the 1990s, two […]
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Yes, you heard us right. Robotics is coming to agriculture. Companies around the world are racing to develop new tools in this rapidly growing field. China just launched a seven-year program to develop “autonomous agriculture” (Minter, 2018), and organic farmers in Australia are getting a $250,000 government grant to use robotic weeders on their organic […]
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“Weeds are winning the war against herbicide resistance.” This stark analysis is part of the title of a new Scientific American deep-dive into efforts to battle weed resistance. The author, Brooke Borel, summarizes the latest science, including research done at North Carolina State University. Scientists at NC State reached the sobering conclusion that “[there is a] […]
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The headline in a March 2018 story in the Western Farm Press reads “The alfalfa industry wants more favorable farm policy for its forage crop.” It argues that alfalfa doesn’t get the support and respect it deserves, given that by value, it is the number three field crop grown in the U.S., behind corn and […]
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The seductive, but corrosive impact of mythology will be a recurrent theme as historians explain the rise and fall of first-generation genetically engineered (GE) crop technology in the U.S. Here are just a few of the myths that arose along with the new crops: GE corn will affix its own nitrogen. Herbicide-tolerant crops will reduce […]
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A new study published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences takes some of the mystery out of how aggressive weeds like Palmer amaranth and common waterhemp developed resistance to glyphosate herbicides so quickly. Researchers from Kansas State University have discovered that these pigweeds develop extra-chromosomal circular DNA (eccDNA), genetic material that […]
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