Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 10/13/20

Farm chemical makers Bayer and BASF are fighting to keep dicamba on the market for U.S. farmers to spray across their cotton and soybean fields, after a federal court clamped down on the controversial weedkiller in June because of its tendency to drift to nearby farmlands and damage neighbors’ crops.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the German multinationals are seeking approval from the EPA to let growers mix dicamba with new chemical agents that would prevent drifting, which has been blamed for harming millions of acres of crops. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler has said the agency will come to a decision by mid-October.

Ag officials in the 20 largest soybean states have already received more than 900 complaints of dicamba-related damage this year, and Bayer in June agreed to pay up to $400 million to settle such claims. Disputes over the chemical have also fueled personal conflicts among farmers, even cases of vandalism and deadly violence.

Meanwhile in France, food safety regulators last week said they’ll restrict certain uses of glyphosate, another controversial herbicide, in cases where other substances are available as a replacement, writes POLITICO’s Eddy Wax.

The government published results of a two-year study into potential alternatives to glyphosate, which is widely used but seen as potentially carcinogenic, and determined that farmers won’t be authorized to spray the weedkiller between rows of fruit trees or on soil used for growing sunflowers and major cereal crops, for example.

The new rules also cap the amount of glyphosate that can be applied per hectare (roughly 2.5 acres) in a single year. Those limits will vary across agricultural sectors. France is aiming to phase out glyphosate entirely by 2023.