Tell the EPA Not to Re-Approve Carcinogenic, Drift-Prone Dicamba Herbicide

PROPOSED RULE: Proposed New Use on Dicamba-tolerant cotton and Dicamba-tolerant soybean.

Regulations.gov Document ID: EPA-HQ-OPP-2024-0154-1233

Comment Period: July 21, 2025 to September 6, 2025

Agency: Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

View the terms of participation and privacy notice for Regulations.gov. All comments made on regulations.gov action centers will be public comments, so we encourage action-takers not to include personally identifiable information in their messages.

EPA INVITES MASS DESTRUCTION WITH RE-APPROVAL OF DICAMBA

"Over-the-top dicamba is very effective for controlling herbicide-resistant weeds in dicamba-tolerant cotton and soybeans. Under the Trump Administration, EPA will ensure that farmers have the tools they need to protect crops and provide a healthy and affordable food supply for our country," an EPA spokesperson told Newsweek.

On what planet do the EPA political appointees live? Twice banned by the courts, we know there is no way to use this toxic, carcinogenic herbicide without causing immeasurable collateral damage and harm.

Ultraprocessed foods made with GMO soy are already unhealthy. Drenching the GMO soy with toxic dicamba takes those risks to a whole new level. And no, these GMO foods are not affordable, despite being taxpayer-subsidized. The only thing the EPA is ensuring is another giveaway to pesticide giants—while turning a blind eye to the sweeping death and destruction they cause.

Dicamba is known to be so toxic and dangerous that it was banned by the courts in 2020 and and again in 2024. If Bayer-Monsanto, ChemChina-Syngeta, and BASF succeed in getting EPA to overturn the courts and rubber-stamp dicamba herbicide for the third time, it will be disastrous for agriculture, the environment, and the health of humans and wildlife.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Dicamba is a highly toxic, volatile, and drift-prone herbicide known to be able to spread for miles beyond its area of application, killing or damaging all vegetation in its path. The herbicide is so volatile it has the potential to re-aerosolize and drift days after its application in certain weather conditions, making it very difficult, if not impossible, to track back to the source. Because it’s so hard to track, polluters are rarely held accountable.

GMO farmers’ reliance and overuse of glyphosate on GMO glyphosate-tolerant crops since the mid-1990s has caused weeds to evolve resistance to the herbicide. These “superweeds” can't be killed with glyphosate alone. So Monsanto genetically engineered new crops able to tolerate over-the-top spraying with both glyphosate and dicamba.

The USDA deregulated Monsanto’s glyphosate and dicamba-tolerant soybean and cotton seeds in 2015.

Failing to listen to massive public concern and outcry prior to the first approval in 2016, the EPA went on to approve certain dicamba formulations for over-the-top spraying on Monsanto’s GMO soy and cotton. Despite the sounding of alarm bells by farmers and environmental groups like GMO/Toxin Free USA, EPA gave these dicamba formulations the rubber stamp.

Following EPA’s approvals, year after year dicamba drift was responsible for damaging or destroying millions of acres of non-GMO soy, cotton and other food crops like sugar beets, rice, sweet potatoes, peanuts, peaches, tomatoes, grapes and more, harming the livelihoods of non-GMO and organic farmers, and even harming GMO farmers who didn’t want to buy the new, expensive seeds. Dicamba drift has also caused widespread damage to native plants and trees, wildlife refuges, and home gardens.

Dicamba drift damaged an estimated 5 million acres of crops, trees and backyard gardens between 2016 and 2017. Despite the massive reports of drift damage, in 2018 the Trump EPA not only re approved its use, but expanded the geographical areas where it could be used.

USDA data shows that dicamba drift damaged 15 million acres of soybeans in 2018 alone.

And to add insult to injury, the USDA does zero testing of food crops for dicamba contamination. So we don’t know how much of this carcinogenic chemical we are consuming in our food.

In 2020, a National Institutes of Health study, published in the journal International Journal of Epidemiology, found that the use of dicamba can increase the risk of developing numerous cancers, including liver and intrahepatic bile duct cancers, acute and chronic lymphocytic leukemia, and mantle cell lymphoma which may manifest up to 20 years after exposure. With dicamba’s ability to drift for miles, people in many areas of the country are now routinely forced to breathe in this dangerous chemical.

A 2024 study, published in the journal Frontiers in Cancer Control and Society, found the amount of pesticides used on farms was strongly associated with the incidence of many cancers for farmers and their families, and also for entire communities. The study showed that "agricultural pesticides can increase your risk for some cancers just as much as smoking” and living in places with high pesticide use increased the risk of colon and pancreatic cancers by more than 80%.

A first-of-its-kind 2025 study, published in the journal GeoHealth, finds exposure to multiple pesticides significantly increases the risk of childhood cancers compared with exposures to just one pesticide, raising new fears that children are more at risk to the substances’ harmful effects than previously thought. If reapproved, dicamba will be added to the toxic cocktail of pesticides already being used on GMO farms.

In South Dakota, Little Shire Farm, an organic farm run by John and Lisa Zuhlke, was devastated multiple times over multiple years by dicamba drift. “We got completely wiped out. We had to stop production. All of our CSA shares, community-supported agriculture shares-gone; farmers markets–gone.”

Richard Coy was forced to shut down Coy’s Honey Farm in Arkansas, the largest family-operated beekeeping operation in the state, and move it to Mississippi. Dicamba drift damaged the vegetation his bees depended on to live, and also resulted in “undesirable product.” "It's very emotional, but you can't let emotions get in the way of business decisions, and the best business decision is to not go broke,” said Coy.

Bader Farms, the largest peach orchard in Missouri, reported 1,000 acres of peaches damaged by dicamba drift over multiple years. Bill Bader’s peach farm was put out of business.

After growing non-GMO soybeans for 15 years, farmer Adam Chappell was forced to switch to GMO dicamba-tolerant soybeans because GMO farmers surrounding him were using dicamba-tolerant soybeans and spraying dicamba. This was, in fact, part of Monsanto's strategy and marketing plan. In 2020, the Midwest Center conducted an extensive investigation and found that Monsanto released its dicamba-tolerant soybeans knowing the herbicide would cause widespread damage to soybean and cotton crops that weren’t resistant to dicamba. Monsanto used “protection from your neighbors” as a way to sell their seeds. This is nothing short of extortion.

Drift issues even led to a murder in Arkansas in 2018. Farmer Mike Wallace was shot dead after he blamed his crop loss on a neighboring farm. When Wallace confronted the neighboring farm’s farmhand, Curtis Jones, for illegally spraying dicamba, Jones murdered him.

These are only a few of the many thousands of cases of farms and lives devastated by dicamba drift.

In July 2020, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated EPA’s registration of dicamba. But the Trump administration ignored the court order and re-registered dicamba for use through 2025.

In 2021, the EPA introduced minimal restrictions on dicamba use to address the drift issues. But by the Agency’s own admission, this did nothing to reduce dicamba drift damage. EPA’s own data shows dicamba has harmed thousands of farmers to date. The EPA’s December 2021 report states that these numbers are likely an undercount by 25 times.

Through the 2022 and 2023 growing seasons, it was the same song, different verse. With EPA’s inaction, more damage and health harms were documented across America.

“I would like everyone to contact the EPA… If we can get enough people to rise up and say ‘enough is enough, we don’t want to poison our food’, maybe we can get something changed,” said beekeeper Richard Coy.

On February 6, 2024, the U.S. District Court of Arizona overturned the 2020 dicamba registrations that allowed over-the-top applications of three dicamba products, Bayer-Monsanto’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and ChemChina-Syngenta’s Tavium. The second court order in four years!

Now in 2025, the Trump EPA wants to re-approve this dangerous pesticide again. This is truly madness. There is no other word for it. The EPA and White House must stop colluding with the pesticide industry and start defending public health and the environment.

Demand that the EPA do its job and reverse course. Tell the EPA to ban dicamba once and for all.