The US Environmental Protection Agency is due in federal court on Tuesday to answer allegations that it broke the law to support a Monsanto system that has triggered “widespread” crop damage over the last few summers and continues to threaten farms across the country. As farmers prepare to plant a new season of key American food crops, farmer and consumer groups are asking the ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco to review and overturn the EPA’s approval of a Monsanto herbicide made with a chemical called dicamba. The allegations are from the National Family Farm Coalition, which represents tens of thousands of farmers across the US, and three non-profit consumer and environmental groups. They have been granted an expedited review of their legal petition and hope for a ruling that would block use of the herbicide this summer. The court hearing, which is to be handled by phone due to the coronavirus closing of California courthouses, comes just a month after the office of inspector general for the EPA said it would open an investigation into the agency’s handling of dicamba herbicides. Farmers have reported dicamba damage in both organic and conventional crops, including non-GMO soybeans, wheat, grapes, melons, vegetables and tobacco. A Missouri peach farmer won a $265m verdict in February against Monsanto and German chemical giant BASF after accusing the companies of creating a “defective” crop system that damaged 30,000 peach trees. The Guardian reported last month that internal Monsanto documents obtained through the peach farmer litigation revealed that Monsanto predicted its dicamba crop system would lead to thousands of damage claims from US farmers but pushed ahead anyway, trying to downplay the risks to the EPA.“You’ve had millions of acres impacted,” said George Kimbrell, a lawyer with the Center for Food Safety, which is one of the environmental groups seeking court review of the EPA, alongside the Center for Biological Diversity and Pesticide Action Network. Kimbrell said: “They decided to make farmers part of an ongoing experiment. The dicamba problem is unprecedented.”The crop system in question was developed by Monsanto with help from BASF to encourage farmers to buy dicamba herbicides and spray them over the top of new genetically engineered soybean and cotton crops developed by Monsanto to tolerate dicamba. The altered crops survive dicamba spray but weeds die, making it easier for farmers to eradicate weeds resistant to other herbicides such as Monsanto’s glyphosate. Before the introduction of Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant cotton in 2015 and soybeans in 2016, farmers were largely restricted from using dicamba during the growing season because the chemical can easily drift and vaporize, traveling long distances from where it is sprayed. But the release of the new dicamba-tolerant crops upended that restraint and the EPA subsequently approved “new use” dicamba products sold by Monsanto, BASF and Corteva Agriscience for
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EPA faces court over backing of Monsanto’s controversial crop system:
