Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 1/30/18

It's a question that's been buzzing in ag circles: How did a professor from North Dakota get to a November hearing to testify before the Arkansas Plant Board in Little Rock, which helped lead to a ban of the weedkiller dicamba in the state from April through October?

Richard K. Zollinger, a retired North Dakota State University professor, said during a conference in Fargo on Jan. 16 that after a chemist wrote an anonymous letter to the Arkansas Plant Board saying that he was too afraid for his career to comment about dicamba, that the board invited him instead. A news report in AgWeek contended that the plant board had "sent a jet" to fetch the professor to speak at the hearing.

Private what? The prospect of a speaker being shuttled to an Arkansas hearing on a government-paid private jet riled up folks in the Twittersphere who have been following the contentious battle. Adriane Barnes, an Arkansas Plant Board spokeswoman, said an email to POLITICO that she confirmed with the board's fiscal director that "we absolutely did not fund a flight for Mr. Zollinger for the November public hearing."

Answer to the mystery: On Monday afternoon, Ed Fryar, chief executive of Ozark Mountain Poultry, contacted your host to say that it was he who had offered to fly Zollinger to the hearing on his company's eight-seater turboprop plane. He said that he had invited Zollinger to speak because he was having trouble finding local farmers to sell him the non-GMO soybeans that he needed to continue raising his chickens free of genetically modified ingredients. 

"We have a problem buying non-GMO soybeans because farmers are afraid to plant non-GMO soybeans because they are all susceptible to dicamba," said Fryar. When the ban is in place, and he is hopeful that farmers are going to be able to supply him with non-GMO soybean feed.

Nebraska won't go as far: In other dicamba news, the Omaha World-Herald reported that Nebraska wouldn't go beyond the EPA's rules - such as by implementing a full-fledged ban like in Arkansas.

Looking ahead: The Arkansas fight may not be quite over. Monsanto, which markets dicamba, has filed a lawsuit in Pulaski County Circuit Court in Arkansas, arguing that the Plant Board went beyond its authority in prohibiting use of the weedkiller. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Feb. 16. The dicamba spraying ban is scheduled to begin April 16 in the state.