Panel waves off Arkansas herbicide-ban vote

With just three weeks left in the spraying season for rice, a committee of the state Plant Board on Thursday found few options for dealing with crop damage possibly caused by a new herbicide.

Farmers across the state the past two weeks have flooded the Plant Board, crop consultants, county extension agents, and experts with the University of Arkansas System's Agriculture Division with complaints that Loyant, a new herbicide for rice fields, has damaged their soybeans.

The off-target movement of the herbicide has come from both aerial and ground applications, even when applicators are closely following the label instructions for spraying the herbicide, said Denny Stokes of Earle, a Plant Board member and owner of Stokes Flying Service.

Stokes said his company is among many aerial applicators who've stopped spraying rice for the season because of the problems. "We're one for one," Stokes told colleagues on the Plant Board's pesticide committee. "One job, one complaint. We're done."

Stokes, who represents the Arkansas Agricultural Aviation Association on the board, said his pilots and crew followed the directions the federal Environmental Protection Agency approved last year for spraying Loyant. "I've dealt with drift my whole life, but we're seeing [damage] a mile away" from rice fields where Loyant was applied, he said.

With rice farmers just two or three weeks from the end of spraying, a vote by the committee for a stop-use order likely would do little good because of the time involved in getting such a measure approved by the full board, Stokes said. "I think the problem is taking care of itself because people aren't putting it out anymore," he said.

After spraying for weeds and grasses is concluded, rice fields are flooded, providing another level of weed control until harvest time.

Stokes and other committee members said Dow AgroSciences, as the manufacturer of Loyant, and other herbicide makers, in general, need to do more to make their products safer.

With no desire to approve a ban, the committee asked staff members to work with Dow representatives in drafting a new memorandom to rice growers and applicators. The advisory, released a couple of hours after the meeting, stresses the need to follow the label with a couple of other points:

• Soybeans "are especially sensitive to drift" from Loyant.

• Farmers should not apply the herbicide when the wind is blowing toward "adjacent cotton, carrots, soybeans, corn, grain sorghum, wheat, grapes, tobacco, vegetable crops, flowers, ornamental shrubs or trees, or other desirable broadleaf plants."

How to define "adjacent" was debated among committee members but wasn't settled.

While the Plant Board has received seven official complaints of Loyant damage, Jonathan Siebert, a Dow representative, said he and other Dow employees have walked 18 fields where Arkansas farmers have found wilted soybean plants only about a month into their growing season. The size of damaged fields ranged from 15 acres to about 200 acres, he said.

They've also scouted damage at six farms in Louisiana and two in Mississippi, two states that generally have later planting and spraying schedules than Arkansas'.

Some plants have recovered, but effects of the early damage on yields won't be known until closer to harvest.

Siebert said Dow sold enough Loyant in Arkansas to cover about 170,000 acres of the estimated 1.3 million acres of rice but didn't know how much has actually been sprayed.

Siebert said farmers and applicators have to abide by instructions on the label to avoid off-target movement, whether by physical drift or a temperature process called inversion.

Siebert said the company would work with UA weed scientists and soybean and rice experts on a plan for next year's crops.

Business on 06/01/2018

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