Farm groups urge the Ninth Circuit appeals court to reject an NGO call to invalidate the Environmental Protection Agency’s dicamba existing stocks order. The EPA recently defended its decision to allow farmers to continue to use existing stocks of three dicamba herbicides.
The court vacated the registrations for XtendiMax, FeXapan and Engenia earlier this month. The groups, including the American Farm Bureau Federation and commodity organizations, have filed an amicus brief supporting EPA’s position.
The groups say, “Neither a midseason cancellation nor a vacatur unplants a seed, retroactively tills a field, or clears a storehouse of products purchased for lawful use under the prior registration.”
The coalition says immediately banning use of existing stocks of would financially devastate America’s soybean and cotton growers, who have invested an estimated $4.28 billion in seed and hundreds of millions on herbicides.
The coalition says an estimated 64 million acres of dicamba-tolerant seed is already in the ground. Without dicamba, the groups say expected yield loss for soy and cotton could reach 50 percent.
