The Environmental Protection Agency has approved farmers in Mississippi and Minnesota to continue using the weedkiller dicamba, which has been blamed for damaging crops and wild vegetation, NPR reports.
Earlier this week, the EPA announced that dicamba, which is produced by Monsanto and was described by the agency as "a valuable pest control tool," can be used on varieties of soybeans and cotton that are resistant to the chemical.
Although dicamba was intended to replace the popular weedkiller glyphosate, which has become less effective against certain weeds, farmers reported widespread damage to non-resistant soybeans and other vegetables, though these complaints decreased in 2018.
The EPA did add more restrictions on how dicamba can be used, but Iowa State University scientist Bob Hartzler, who specializes in weeds, wrote on his website: "I don't think that these new restrictions will have a significant impact on the problems we've seen the past two years."
“The Trump EPA’s reckless re-approval of this dangerous poison ignores the facts on the ground and damage across millions of acres,” Nathan Donley, senior scientist for the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, said in a press release. “Simply adding more use restrictions to an uncontrollable pesticide that already comes with 39 pages of instructions and limitations reflects a broken process. Pesticide regulation has been hijacked by pesticide makers.”
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