Since 2017, farmers have sprayed an increasing amount of the weed killer, called dicamba, on soybean and cotton crops genetically engineered by agribusiness company Monsanto to withstand being sprayed by the herbicide. But each year, dicamba has drifted off-target and damaged millions of acres of non-resistant soybeans, specialty crops and other plants.
Farmers have been using the weed killer glyphosate – a key ingredient of the product Roundup – at soaring levels even as glyphosate has become increasingly less effective and as health concerns and lawsuits mount.
In lieu of government research, a state with legal marijuana, like Colorado, is left to develop its own set of rules. That can leave cannabis growers largely on their own.
The EPA has little ability to monitor how well regulations are working, and no way to determine how frequently agricultural pesticides drift onto, or otherwise make contact with, workers.
On July 28, 2017, a central Iowa emergency dispatcher received a 911 call from a man in a corn field.
