Tennessee Restricts Dicamba After Major Crop Damage

July 18, 2017 — Tennessee has become the fourth state in the nation to take action on dicamba, a pesticide that was illegally sprayed on crops throughout the mid-South in 2016.

Tennessee restricted dicamba spraying on July 13, following similar actions in Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas.

Texas is one of at least a dozen states where dicamba has damaged millions of acres of crops as a result of drifting off the fields where it was sprayed and into nearby agricultural fields, orchards, and homes.

Hunter Raffety, a farmer in Wyatt, Missouri, explained the situation:

“We’ve had damage across just about every acre of soybeans we farm in southeast Missouri. In our small town, the azaleas, the ornamentals, people have lost their vegetable gardens. It’s a big problem.”

Four states have now taken action on dicamba in July 2017. Arkansas banned dicamba sales and spraying for 120 days. Missouri banned dicamba temporarily, and then followed Tennessee’s lead in restricting what hours and weather conditions farmers were allowed to spray it.

Kansas is investigating complaints of crop damage. There are over 1,000 complaints in Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. About 60% of the complaints are from Arkansas, a major soybean grower.

Last year, Monsanto began selling genetically-modified (GMO) soybeans that were engineered to survive being sprayed by glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, and dicamba.

Dicamba has been around for decades, but before Monsanto released this new GMO soybean, dicamba was only directly applied to the soil to kill weeds before crops started growing. After Monsanto released the new seed, farmers started spraying dicamba on growing cropland.

The problem with spraying dicamba on plants — and the reason it is illegal — is because dicamba evaporates very quickly into the air and drifts away from the field where it was sprayed, stunting the growth of any plant that is not genetically-engineered to survive being sprayed.

Need a Dicamba Lawyer in Texas?

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The Clark Firm has assembled a team of trial lawyers with more than 100 years experience, participation in over 600 jury trials and $260 million in verdicts and/or settlements. Please use the form below to contact our Texas dicamba lawyers. We would like to speak with you as part of our investigation into injuries related to dicamba.