Earlier this week, a federal court judge “vacated” the U.S. registrations of several dicamba-based herbicides, saying the Environmental Protection Agency “violated procedures mandating public input,” Reuters reported.

The ruling affects Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and Sygnenta’s Tavium. The herbicides are applied during the growing season to soybeans and cotton crops that have genetic tolerance to dicamba.

The change in registration status doesn’t affect Canadian growers, said Ginger Rozmus, Bayer Crop Science Canada communications spokesperson.

“The recent court ruling in the U.S. has no impact on Canada’s use or registration of Roundup Xtend 2 and XtendiMax 2 herbicide with VaporGrip technology,” she said in an email.

Further, she said, soybeans that have been sprayed with dicamba can still be exported to the United States.

“The recent U.S. ruling is a result of a procedural error and not related to the safety of the product,” Rozmus said.

“There are no changes to MRLs (maximum residue levels) enabling export of agricultural products.”

While Canadian farmers can relax, the court decision could have massive implications for soybean and cotton growers in the U.S.

The ruling could impact more than 50 million acres of dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton, says the American Soybean Association.

“If the administration does not issue an existing stocks order so we can use the millions of dollars of product already ordered for spring planting, we are in a world of hurt,” said Josh Gackle, ASA president and a soybean grower from North Dakota.

The timing of the ruling is problematic because most farmers have already ordered their seed and herbicides for this growing season.

“There are few alternative products available to cover the capacity of a nationwide switch,” the Soybean Association said.

The court in Arizona ruled that the EPA failed to provide public notice and a comment period before re-registering dicamba products in October 2020.

“The court outlined the massive damage to stakeholders that were deprived of their opportunity to comment, such as growers that do not use over-the-top dicamba,” said the Centre for Food Safety, an environmental group and one of the plaintiffs in the case.

The Feb. 6 court ruling is the latest twist in a complicated story related to dicamba.

After dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton entered the market, there were thousands of reported cases of dicamba drift and damage to other crops in 2017. Part of the problem was that many growers used older formulations of dicamba that were more volatile.

The University of Missouri estimated that 3.6 million acres of soybeans suffered off-target damage in 2017, and there were 2,700 complaints across the U.S.

In response, the U.S. EPA introduced label changes for in-crop spraying of dicamba, saying it could only be applied at lower wind speeds and during daytime hours to avoid temperature inversions that can cause drift.

Dicamba drift has also been an issue in Ontario. A grower may plant Xtend soybeans with tolerance to dicamba on one field, but the next field over could have beans that are sensitive to dicamba.

Drift has been less of a problem in Manitoba’s soybean industry, possibly because the province has a cooler climate and growers apply herbicides early in the growing season.

The drift complaints in the U.S. led to lawsuits, and environmental groups challenged the EPA in court.

In June 2020, a U.S. court ruled that the EPA understated the risk related to the drift of the herbicide. It vacated the registration for over-the-top use of dicamba products.

However, the EPA decided farmers could use their existing supplies “before it eventually reauthorized use again with new restrictions in October 2020,” said CropLife.com.

That EPA decision prompted another lawsuit, which led to the Feb 6. court ruling in Arizona.

The American Soybean Association and other farm groups are asking the EPA to issue an existing stocks order as soon as possible so growers can use dicamba over the top in soy and cotton crops in 2024.

––Robert Arnason writes for the Western Producer from Manitoba.

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“Definitely everyone in the industry is talking less corn and more beans”, said Scott Capinegro of Barrington Commodity Brokers in Barrington, Ill. “I think your biggest switch in acres will be…in North Dakota and South Dakota. Illinois and Iowa usually stick to their guns with their crop rotations.”

Capinegro said a couple of new soybean facilities are due to come online in the near future, which should improve the crop’s demand. Added to that is the cost of production for corn, which has eroded its profitability. Also, he pointed out the amount of corn farmers still have.

Should any price rallies occur in corn, Capinegro said they would likely not last long as the quantity of corn the farmers sell off would meet demand.

However, one cap on potential soybean acres he noted was the size of the cotton crop in the South.

“It’s a little early to tell, but cotton has been on a nice run to the upside,” Capinegro said.

Two firms have recently published their estimates for U.S. plantings in 2024/25. Farm Futures pegged soybean acres to bump up to 84.95 million, while S&P Global forecast 85.5 million. For corn, Farm Futures projected nearly 92.8 million and S&P called for 93 million.

The United States Department of Agriculture reported soybean plantings in 2023/24 came to 83.6 million acres and those for corn came to 94.6 million. Harvested acres were 82.4 million for soybeans and 86.5 million for corn.

— Glen Hallick reports for MarketsFarm from Winnipeg. 

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Temperatures were forecast to reach 111 F (44 C) in parts of the Texas Panhandle, a core area for cotton and cattle production.

While much of the U.S. spring crop growing areas have seen rain, the southern edges of the Midwest are struggling with heat and drought, potentially cutting into U.S. production potential at a time low global crop supplies have contributed to high food prices.

“If you look at the crop conditions, the biggest problem is in Texas,” said Jack Scoville, vice president at Price Futures Group in Chicago. “A lot of the cotton has already seen some permanent damage this year,” Scoville said.

More than three-quarters of Texas is under severe drought or worse as of July 12, the largest area under that classification for the country’s top cotton state in nine years, according to U.S. Drought Monitor data.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture rated 38 per cent of the U.S. cotton crop in good to excellent condition late on Monday, the lowest for this time of year since 2011. In Texas, only 21 per cent of the crop was rated good-to-excellent.

“The Texas crop is not going to see a recovery,” said Keith Brown, principal at Georgia-based cotton broker Keith Brown and Co.

Cattle are being taken off parched grazing pastures in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas and moved to feedlots or slaughterhouses, said Brian Hoops, president of Midwest Market Solutions.

Pockets of dryness have also emerged in the heart of the U.S. Corn Belt, but forecasts called for beneficial rains in much of the region next week, said Joel Widenor, a meteorologist with the Commodity Weather Group.

Still, areas on the fringes of the crop belt are stressed. In southwest Missouri, some farmers are cutting their corn for silage instead of waiting to harvest in the fall, Hoops said.

“It’s a bad situation for producers in this area. I have a hard time believing that we are going to see the type of a national (corn yield) average that the USDA is forecasting,” Hoops said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Julie Ingwersen; additional reporting by Arpan Varghese, Kavya Guduru and Karl Plume.

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The University of Arkansas last week announced its ag researchers had found glufosinate-resistant Palmer amaranth in crops in two eastern Arkansas counties across the Mississippi River from Memphis.

The finding “does not appear to be widespread” in those counties, they said — and among other weeds, only four grasses are known to have developed glufosinate resistance, three of those in other countries overseas.

But the finding may not bode well for the chemical’s expanded use against weeds that have already developed resistance to other chemistries.

Bayer, for example, recently expanded its Roundup Ready Xtend crop system to include a new line of XtendFlex soybeans, which have tolerance not only to glyphosate and dicamba but to glufosinate as well, partly as a way to expand growers’ options against herbicide-resistant weeds throughout the growing season.

Glufosinate, a broad-spectrum Group 10 product, “is one of the few remaining chemistries that are effective in controlling pigweed in soybeans and other crops,” Arkansas extension weed scientist Tom Barber said Thursday in a release.

“We have put a lot of selection pressure on glufosinate the last 10 years or more, so no, it is not surprising… and likely was inevitable.”

The resistance in Palmer amaranth was first reported last summer in two “fields of concern” in Mississippi County where three applications of the chemical had failed to control the weed. “These two fields had that ‘look’ and were very suspicious, to say the least,” Barber and other researchers wrote in a blog post last week.

Putting the strain of Palmer amaranth through the screening process to confirm resistance, the researchers found the biotype from Crittenden County was 3.5 times less sensitive to glufosinate, and the cases in Mississippi County “appear to be at least 15 times more resistant than the susceptible standard used for evaluation in the screening.”

Without glufosinate, “in cotton or soybean crops, the options are limited, especially post-emergence,” Barber said, recommending the use of two residual herbicides at planting, along with “paraquat at planting to make sure we start clean.” Dicamba and use of the Enlist system are also options.

However, “the best plan is to rotate to corn or rice on the acre if possible as well as remove all pigweed escapes, which will reduce seed returning to the seed bank,” he said.

Tommy Butts, also an extension weed scientist and co-author of the blog post, said growers can slow herbicide resistance in weed populations by avoiding “overreliance” on a single control method.

“Now, more than ever, it is a must to diversify weed control strategies and implement an integrated weed management approach including cultural, mechanical and preventative tactics,” he said. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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XtendiMax, a dicamba-based herbicide that is sprayed on soybeans and cotton genetically engineered to resist it, is known to drift away and damage other crops that are not resistant to it.

“This decision includes a five-year registration, providing certainty to growers as they make future purchasing decisions,” Wheeler told reporters on a call.

The decision is a boost for Bayer, which has been hammered by lawsuits over various chemicals in the United States since acquiring seed company Monsanto in 2018. It is also an example of the Trump administration favoring business interests over regulations a week before the presidential election.

The EPA also approved the use of BASF’s Engenia herbicide and extended an approval for Syngenta’s Tavium.

Environmental groups have sought a ban on dicamba products, arguing they harm nearby plants and wildlife.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed this summer and ruled the EPA substantially understated the risks related to the use of dicamba. Its ruling also blocked sales of dicamba-based herbicides like Engenia and Corteva’s FeXapan.

The EPA’s decision invalidates the court’s ruling, experts said.

“Rather than evaluating the significant costs of dicamba drift as the Ninth Circuit told them the law required, EPA rushed re-approval as a political prop just before the election,” said George Kimbrell, legal director at the Center for Food Safety.

About 60 per cent of the U.S. soybean crop this year was estimated to be seeded with Bayer’s dicamba-resistant Xtend soybeans, according to Bayer. They need to be sprayed with the herbicide to ward off weeds that have developed a tolerance for glyphosate herbicide.

The EPA said it would impose a June 30 deadline for farmers to spray dicamba on soybeans and a July 30 deadline for its use on cotton.

— Reporting for Reuters by Tom Polansek in Chicago.

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The profits of growing six key crops are set to fall by almost a third by 2070, the research said, though losses could be reduced by shifting traditional crop heartlands — potentially reshaping distinctive regional landscapes and livelihoods.

“Our results show considerable potential from crop switching to avoid some of the damages from climate change,” said Naresh Devineni, co-author of the paper and associate professor in the civil engineering department at The City University of New York.

“However, the remaining losses imply that crop switching is not a panacea and that new seed varieties and new adaptation practices are needed to support farmers and meet the food demands of the future.”

The research, published in Nature Communications, analyzed the potential impact of rising temperatures and extreme weather on the profitability of growing barley, corn, cotton, soybeans, rice, and wheat.

It estimated that up to half of the forecast losses could be avoided if farmers adapt to changing conditions by switching crops or relocating fields.

Corn would become less concentrated in the Midwest while the wheat lands of the Great Plains would see a gradual “hollowing-out,” found the paper, which modelled optimum growing areas for crops under changing climates.

Soybean production would have to shift north.

Cotton, which was found to be the most resilient crop to rises in temperature, was also likely to be grown further north and could become the dominant crop in southern California, it said.

In order to minimize the losses, more than half of U.S. counties would have to see changes in the crops planted there by 2070 compared to the present, the research said.

However, even if farmers are able to adjust their plantings, about five per cent of farmland is seen becoming inviable for any of the six key crops by 2070, with southern states likely the worst affected.

“Farmers are particularly exposed to the problems of climate change,” said paper author James Rising, an assistant professorial research fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment in Britain.

“We need to better understand the potential for adaptation for farmers and policy-makers to make long-term decisions.”

— Reporting by Sonia Elks for the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly.

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A jury in U.S. District Court in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, handed Bader, the state’s largest peach farmer, $15 million in actual and $250 million in punitive damages (all figures US$). He sued the companies saying his 1,000-acre orchard was irreparably harmed by herbicide that they produce, which drifted onto its trees from nearby farms.

The three-week trial was the first case in the United States to rule on the use of dicamba-based herbicides alleged to have damaged tens of thousands of acres of U.S. cropland. The herbicide can become a vapour and drift for miles when used in certain weather, farmers have claimed.

Bayer said it was “disappointed with the jury’s verdict” and plans to appeal. BASF also said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the decision and plans to appeal. Both companies said their dicamba-based herbicides are safe when used as directed.

Bayer faces separate multi-billion-dollar litigation over the Roundup weedkiller made by Monsanto, the U.S. firm it took over for $63 billion in 2018. Monsanto made Roundup and dicamba, and Bayer is being sued over both products.

“We believe the evidence presented at trial demonstrated that Monsanto’s products were not responsible for the losses,” Bayer said.

Bayer and BASF face other dicamba lawsuits that could begin late his year before the same judge in Missouri, said attorney Billy Randles, whose firm represented Bader and also represents dozens of others with similar claims.

“These are all the same” allegations, said Randles. “They claim negligent design, failure to warn and all allege a joint venture” between Bayer and BASF. The jury found the two equally liable for the damages.

Bader Farms, in southern Missouri near the Arkansas border, said it lost many trees when the herbicide containing dicamba was used on nearby soybean and cotton farms and drifted onto its property.

The farm said repeated dicamba exposure beginning in 2015 killed or weakened the fruit trees.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency imposed restrictions on the use of dicamba in November 2018 over concerns about potential damage to nearby crops.

“As long as dicamba is around, it’s not viable,” Randles said of the orchard.

— Reporting for Reuters by Patricia Weiss and Gary McWilliams.

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The Food and Drug Administration’s decision on the cotton plant developed by Texas A+M University scientists means it is allowed as food for people and all types of animals.

Texas A+M AgriLife Research plant biotechnologist Keerti Rathore said the scientists are holding discussions with companies and hope to have the plant commercially available within about five years. Rathore said the team also will explore seeking regulatory approval in other countries starting with Mexico.

“Yes, we are fully aware of the resistance to GMOs in many countries, but I remain hopeful that counties who are desperate for food will adopt this technology,” Rathore added.

Cotton is grown in more than 80 countries, with its fibre used to make textiles and cottonseed currently used among other purposes to feed animals such as cattle and sheep that have multiple stomach chambers. Ordinary cottonseed is unfit for humans and many animals to eat because it contains high levels of gossypol, a toxic chemical.

Rathore’s team used so-called RNAi, or RNA interference, technology to “silence” a gene, virtually eliminating gossypol from the cottonseed. Gossypol was left at natural levels in the rest of the plant because it guards against insects and disease.

“With adoption of this technology, cotton becomes a dual-purpose crop. It requires no additional effort on the part of farmers or inputs or land for cultivation. So, it will make cotton farming more sustainable,” Rathore said.

The genetic modification does not affect the plant’s fibre for use in textiles.

The U.S. Agriculture Department last year lifted the regulatory prohibition on cultivation by farmers of the modified cotton plant ahead of the FDA decision on human consumption.

“Cottonseed can be consumed in many ways. We will continue to crush it to extract oil (usable for cooking). However, now the leftover meal with its high protein content can be used as a protein supplement in tortilla, bread and baked goods. The seed kernels can be roasted and eaten as snack or as peanut butter type of spread or in protein bars,” Rathore said.

“To me it tastes like chickpea. Imagine hummus without any other ingredients added to it,” Rathore added.

Many of the world’s cotton-producing countries, particularly in Asia and Africa, have populations that face malnutrition that could be addressed with the new plant, Rathore said.

“There are approximately 10.8 trillion grams of protein locked up in the annual global output of cottonseed. This is enough to meet the basic protein requirements of over 500 million people at a rate of 50 grams of protein per person per day,” Rathore said.

The new cottonseed may also have commercial use as feed for poultry, pigs and farmed aquatic species like fish and shrimp, Rathore said.

— Reporting for Reuters by Will Dunham.

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The walnut, cotton and livestock producer said the A$2 per share offer — a 57.5 per cent premium to Wednesday’s ordinary shares closing price — offered immediate benefits to shareholders “without the inherent risks associated with agricultural enterprises.”

The deal will close in early 2020, subject to shareholder approval.

Based mainly in Montreal, PSP is a Crown corporation investing pension funds for Canadian federal civil servants and members of the Canadian Forces and RCMP.

PSP Investments, which currently holds a 19.1 per cent stake in Webster, will acquire all the ordinary and preference shares in Webster that it does not already own via its subsidiaries PSP BidCo and Sooke Investments Inc.

Under the deal, Webster will then transfer some assets to a separate, newly formed PSP Investments group entity, to be called KoobaCo. Existing shareholders Belfort Investment Advisors and Verolot will be given the opportunity to purchase a 50.1 per cent interest in that new company.

Given the intricacies of the deal, Webster formed an independent committee of two directors not associated with any of the funds to consider the proposal.

“PSP Investments has a proven track record in managing and investing in agricultural assets over the long term for sustainable value creation,” CEO Maurice Felizzi, one of the two non-conflicted directors, said in a statement.

Through its natural resources group, PSP Investments invests globally in agriculture, timberland and related opportunities via direct investments. In 2015, it took a major stake in Australia’s Hewitt Cattle company. Agriculture makes up just over half of PSP’s natural resources group’s investments, almost 58 per cent of which are in the Australasia region.

Webster plans to hold a shareholder meeting to vote on the proposal in early 2020.

The company reiterated its forecast of breakeven financial results this year, due to continued drought conditions.

— Reporting for Reuters by Rashmi Ashok in Bangalore. Includes files from Glacier FarmMedia Network staff.

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Both farmers’ sales have taken heavy blows in Trump’s trade war with China. Neither understands why the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is giving Hagood so much more than Jensen — who grows the nation’s most valuable agriculture export crop, of which China had been the biggest buyer.

“I’m grateful,” Hagood, 64, said of the aid. “But honestly, I’m not sure anyone really understands how this is working right now.”

Certainly not Jensen: “It makes no sense,” she said, noting that soybean farmers in other counties have also been paid much more than her.

At Trump’s direction, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has rolled out $28 billion in trade aid for farmers over the past two years — $12 billion last year and another $16 billion announced this July and being disbursed now (all figures US$).

The widely varying payouts in the second round have confused and irritated farmers nationwide, according to Reuters interviews with more than three dozen growers. Farmers also complained of software problems and poor training of local USDA employees, who have struggled to process applications and payments, farmers and government workers said.

USDA acknowledged “glitches” in the application process in a statement to Reuters and said it was working to speed approvals and payments.

The differing compensation rates result from changes in the USDA’s complex farm-aid formula as the White House struggles to appease farmers — a key voting bloc for Trump — who have seen their incomes fall in the trade war. Farmers have been among the hardest hit by retaliatory Chinese tariffs. Shipments of soybeans to China, for instance, dropped to a 16-year low in 2018.

In the first $12 billion of trade aid, farmers were paid by crop, based on estimated lost sales to China: $1.65 per bushel for soybeans; one penny for corn, which was not widely sold to China in 2017; and six cents per pound of cotton. The paltry payouts for corn, cotton and other crops infuriated farmers growing them, who argued USDA paid soybean farmers at their expense.

Payments to corn and cotton farmers are expected to surge under the second round of aid. Estimated payouts to corn growers, when averaged across all U.S. counties, are 14 times higher than in the first round of aid, according to a USDA explanation of its methodology. Cotton producers’ payments quadrupled.

Instead of paying different rates according to crops grown, the new methodology pays farmers based on the estimated impact of trade policy on all agriculture in their county — regardless of what an individual farmer plants.

Another twist: The estimated impacts on particular counties are based on their export potential over the last 10 years — long before the trade war started. USDA said it needed to look at a bigger time frame to calculate potential trade-related losses. USDA also said it was trying to avoid influencing planting decisions — such as farmers switching to soybeans in hopes of a bigger trade-aid check.

The agency also acknowledged, however, that some aspects of the new formula were crafted to make up for errors perceived to have short-changed certain farmers in the first round of aid.

“There were a number of factors from last year’s programs that we wanted to correct,” USDA chief economist Rob Johansson said in a July call with reporters.

Hagood is on the board of directors for the Texas Farm Bureau. He said he attended meetings with regional USDA officials, who said that areas that grow primarily cotton were paid more per acre in part because USDA wanted to “make up for how little they paid cotton farmers” in the first round.

Jensen, 43, and her family grow soybeans in Minnesota’s Marshall County, about 50 km south of Canadian border crossings near Emerson and Piney, Manitoba. Before the trade war the beans were sold predominantly to the Chinese export market, like most of the soybeans grown on the northwestern edge of the Midwest farm belt.

USDA tried hard to make the payouts equitable, the agency’s secretary, Sonny Perdue, said in a statement last month. “We did everything we could to accommodate everyone,” he said.

Computer crashes, unanswered questions

In addition to confusion over varying payouts to farmers, the second wave of aid has been beset with administrative problems that have slowed processing of applications, farmers and government workers said.

Farmers reported crashing computer systems and poor training of workers handling their applications. Farmers also said they could not get satisfactory explanations for why payment rates vary widely by county — between $15 and $150 an acre.

In a statement to Reuters, USDA confirmed there have been problems with the software used to enroll farmers in county Farm Service Agency offices, which are implementing the new program. It blamed training deficiencies on the limited time the agency had to prepare.

Perdue unveiled the latest aid program details on July 25. USDA said it trained all state and county field offices but that there was not enough time “to address all questions and scenarios prior to July 29,” the day it started accepting applications. The agency said it encountered and adapted to similar issues in the first round of aid last year.

At one USDA Farm Service Agency office in Iowa, employees compiled a homemade cheat-sheet for lack of guidance from Washington, according to a worker there who spoke on condition of anonymity. The worker said staff spent 90 minutes training one day before the program rolled out, but still didn’t know how to answer many of the farmers’ questions.

For Minnesota grain farmer Mike Ingvalson, 41, the latest aid round should bring in about $19,000 for his family’s farming operation, which amounts to about a 10th of their farm income this year. But he keeps running into problems when he tries to apply.

The first time he went into his local USDA office, the computer program crashed. On a second visit, staff couldn’t process his application. Ingvalson will be paid three different rates for growing the same soybean and corn crops in four different counties — but no one has told him why.

“I can’t get a straight answer about anything right now,” said Ingvalson.

— P.J. Huffstutter reports on agriculture and agribusiness for Reuters, based in Chicago.

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