According to one 2004 assessment, dicamba is 75 to 400 times more dangerous to off-target plants than the common weed killer glyphosate, even at very low doses.
Dicamba is particularly toxic to soybeans - the very crop it was designed to protect - that haven't been modified for resistance.
But as dicamba use has increased, so too have reports that it “volatilises,” or re-vaporises and travels to other fields.
That harms nearby trees, such as the dogwood outside of Blytheville, as well as nonresistant soybeans, fruits and vegetables, and plants used as habitats by bees and other pollinators.
Some groups argued that farmers desperately needed the new Dicamba herbicide to control glyphosate-resistant weeds, which can take over fields and deprive soybeans of sunlight and nutrients.
Such weeds have grown stronger and more numerous over the past 20 years - a result of herbicide overuse.
By spraying so much glyphosate, farmers inadvertently caused weeds to evolve resistant traits more quickly.
The new dicamba formulations were supposed to attack these resistant weeds without floating to other fields.
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