The Minnesota Soybean Growers Association (MSGA) Drift Task Force commends the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) for its new dicamba labels for the 2018 growing season.

“We thank MDA for its diligence on this matter,” said MSGA President Michael Petefish. “MSGA is proud to be able to represent Minnesota soybean farmers on such an important issue. With resistant weeds on the rise, farmers need tools such as dicamba to have options to manage their crops.”

As part of their guidelines, MDA set a June 20 application cutoff date and a temperature cutoff of 85 degrees Fahrenheit (the cutoff applies to air temperature at time of application, or if the National Weather Service forecast for the nearest available location high temperature exceeds 85 degrees Fahrenheit).

“Dicamba is an important tool for soybean growers to manage weeds, and I believe these additional restrictions will minimize the off-target movement,” MDA Commissioner Dave Frederickson says. “I want to thank University of Minnesota Extension, and in particular Professor Jeff Gunsolus, for his research report on dicamba, and the Minnesota Soybean Growers for their input on this important issue. We will be closely monitoring the herbicide’s performance with these restrictions in 2018.”

MSGA Director and Drift Task Force Chairman Bob Worth said MDA’s ruling is an important first step.

“With the ruling, we encourage producers and applicators to attend one, or more, of the educational sessions during the many winter production meetings across the state,” he said.

Petefish added: “We need dicamba. We also need these new restrictions. Producers need to have the ability to adapt this product to their operations, and these additional guidelines will allow users to do just that in a safe and environmentally sound manner. Hopefully producers, and applicators, will make the adjustment and it’ll be back to business as usual in the future.”

The Drift Task Force is made up of farmers from MSGA and the Minnesota Soybean Research & Promotion Council. The task force was formed to make sure farmers had a voice on dicamba and other future technologies.

Click here to read the full MDA release.

About the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association
MSGA is a non-profit, farmer-controlled membership organization established in 1962. Its goal is to ensure profitable soybean farming by influencing favorable ag legislation, monitoring government policies and supporting research and market development activities.