ST. LOUIS _ A federal appeals court has ruled that Monsanto's controversial weedkiller dicamba can no longer legally be sprayed over crops, or sold for that use, leaving farmers across the country with product they can't use, and likely costing Monsanto's successor, Bayer, tens of millions of dollars in lost sales this year alone.
The unanimous 56-page ruling handed down on Wednesday by three judges from the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said that the Environmental Protection Agency's most recent approval of top dicamba herbicides in 2018 "substantially understated" multiple risks recognized by the agency, and "also entirely failed to acknowledge" others.
The decision will almost certainly have profound effects not only for Bayer and other companies that produce the drift-prone herbicide, but also for farmers across the country's soybean acreage, where seeds engineered to resist the chemical have soared to popularity in recent years.
