Steve Smith is the Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, which processes 80% of the tomato crop in the Midwest, and Chairman of the Save Our Crops Coalition. He recently traveled from Indiana to Washington D.C. for a September 28, 2018 meeting with senior EPA officials. The topic — the EPA’s pending decision on whether, and […]
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A research team from the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Texas in Austin has made an important contribution to the body of research seeking to answer this key question: Is the world’s most heavily used pesticide (glyphosate) contributing to the widespread decline of honeybees and other pollinators? Glyphosate is the #1 herbicide […]
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First, the back story. Over the years, the USDA has almost always sided with pesticide manufacturers and farmers, in opposition to EPA efforts to curtail or end the use of high-risk pesticides. The arguments advanced by the USDA are always basically the same: There are no viable alternatives to this pesticide. Consumers will face food […]
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Two mayors from Maine wrote a blog piece this week in The Hill as part of a nation-wide effort to block a proposed provision in the new Farm Bill. The House and Senate passed different versions of the bill, and members of both houses (and parties) are working together in a conference committee to develop a […]
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Does the excerpt below from the September 10th issue of Politico’s Morning Agriculture e-newsletter sound familiar? It echoes sentiments on Hygeia in an “Endnote” to our August 20, 2018 post on the Lee Johnson verdict and award, which states — Endnote: The first half of August 2018 will go down in the history of pesticide use and regulation […]
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Herbicide-resistant weeds are a common topic around here, so we were interested in this new science out of Argentina identifying a new “superweed” resistant to glyphosate, dicamba, and 2,4-D. Plus, the researchers learned more about the mechanism of herbicide resistance in one of the most common weed families – the Amaranths (Amaranthus species). Farmers throughout the croplands of the […]
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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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In a now-familiar move, the Trump administration is rolling back an Obama-era ban on the planting of GMO crops on federal lands managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). As Reuters reports, this prohibition also included the use of neonicotinoid insecticides and applies to the federal wildlife refuge system, potentially impacting around […]
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A decades-long trend of lowering sperm counts in American men is in the news these days. The July 25, 2018 New York Times ran a lengthy story about the issue. It touches on possible causes, while reviewing the societal and personal implications of the changing spermatozoal landscape. The Times piece, authored by Nellie Bowles, is motivated […]
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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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