Last Thursday, ASA and Plains Cotton Growers, Inc., argued before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on American Soybean Association v. EPA (D.C. Cir. 20-1441). The two groups urged the court to clarify jurisdictional rules under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and to require the Environmental Protection Agency to use the best available science when evaluating dicamba pesticide registrations and potential impacts to species protected under the Endangered Species Act.
The groups filed the lawsuit against EPA in November 2020 on the five-year registration for the use of dicamba on dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton. Growers argued EPA’s flawed approach led the agency to impose arbitrary and overly burdensome buffers and application cutoff dates, which have harmed grower operations. The agency’s arbitrary requirements have forced many growers to take land out of agricultural production, prevented their ability to use important practices like double-cropping, and made it more difficult to control damaging herbicide-resistant weeds, among other harms. “Growers need herbicides like dicamba to protect crops and maintain important conservation practices, for example, reduced tillage. By failing to use good science and data, EPA is unnecessarily making the farmer’s job harder and hurting our bottom line,” said ASA Director Alan Meadows (TN) in a statement from the organization. “We are hopeful the court will agree and require the agency to redo these assessments using the science and data it has available.”
