Herbicide decimation in the Miss. Delta

[Woodpecker52]

An ecological disaster is taking place in Greenwood Mississippi and other regions of the Mississippi delta from the effects of volitive gassing of 2-4-D used in Ag settings on a massive scale, by soybean, cotton, and corn farmers.  All of the pine trees in town are dead and dying with thinned and stunted crowns,  Cypress trees are dying, and red oak trees are showing curled leaves and thin spindly crowns.  I don't fault some drift, but the atmospheric inversions and its ability to volatize  for 96 hours and effect is sickening and not right.  I would say that the majority of pine damage being seen along the highways is not so much ips beetles but a weaking from years of spray volitity and atmospheric inversions.  Research in Missouri points to effects sometimes 75 miles away.  Why is not the Forestry community not concerned or research being conducted to monitor this or at least study it.  I live in the hills above the delta in woods and I am seeing red oaks especially that have curled leaves and a sick yellowish green shade,  yellow poplar and sycamore that have down curled leaves.  I dare predict the in 15 years at this rate there will not be one cypress or pin oak left in the delta, certainly the days of acorn crops for wildlife will be a thing of the past.

[Southside]

Oh that is bad crap.  There has been at least one homicide over 2.4-d drift in the past couple of years.  I want to say it was in the mid-west.  It's the base ingredient of Agent Orange - let that sink in for those who are old enough to know what that means.  It volatilizes horribly and will travel for a long ways. Guys won't spend the money to install the proper sized nozzle on their $250K sprayer.  Of course the GMO reason this has come to be the new control of choice is because of all the glyphosate resistance that has developed, Palmer Amaranth comes to mind as an example and now burndown of RR beans so they will dry in time.  

Why is this happening?  Monsanto and their lobbyists.    The Forestry lobby does not have the political pull that Monsanto, Bayer, etc. has, that's the simple truth.  You want to see another ecological disaster happening in real time that regulators and politicians are trying to ignore?  Look up bio-solids and PFAS contamination.   

We treat our ag land and livestock as drug addicted, garbage disposals here in the US and wonder why we have health problems. 

[Magicman]

I believe that equal parts of 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T was the "Agent Orange" chemical, not 2,4-D alone.  LINK

[Southside]

I am presuming you are correct, but my statement was that it was a "base ingredient" 

[Magicman]

OK, I see that now.  2,4-D gets a bad rap when the "bad" ingredient was 2,4,5-T.

Back in the mid-late 1950's we used a 2,4,5-T e/w water to kill vegetation on fence rows.  It was a kick butt herbicide until it was removed from the market.  We only bought and used what the Co-Op suggested and sold.  

[Ianab]

I think the main issue back then was that the manufacturing process for those chemicals created Dioxins (as an unintended byproduct) in the spray. Everyone agrees that that's a BAD thing, and is probably why Agent Orange caused so many issues. 

A friend's (at school late 70s) Father was a chemist at the local Dow affiliated chemical plant. He got an award for fine tuning the process to lower the amount of dioxins in their sprays. So even back then they realised it was a problem, but before that the higher dioxin stuff got sold to the US, and mixed into AO.

Spray drift would be a whole other problem, but if it's starting to take out the local trees, then it's a serious one. 

[Southside]

Dicambra has been the biggest 2,4-d containing problem herbicide when it comes to volatility and drift.  There are very tight requirements for humidity, wind, nozzle diameter and pressure setting to apply it within label, and there is the problem, guys don't follow those directions.  The "drift" issue isn't what it would appear to be - a cloud floating over the fence row, the material will vaporize, lift up an unknown vertical distance and can move miles before it re-condenses and lands on other property.  It was pretty touch and go a couple of years ago when general use licensing was being explored and most thought it wasn't going to be released after so many issues happened.  

I would be absolutely livid if some chemical cowboy drifted my farm with that and I would pursue every solution possible.   

[livemusic]

This news about Greenwood MS (or any area) is terrible. Are they able to prove up this negative consequence of the herbicide use? I have not found any info online other than blaming a drought last summer stressing the trees and pine beetles moving in. I know that modern ag is all about chemicals. Bigtime change since I grew up on the farm in the 60s/70s. We still plowed then, lol.

EDIT: I did find this...
https://phys.org/news/2023-03-aim-pesticide-drift-mississippi-delta.html

[Hans2017]

My guess is the drift issue is due to Dicamba. Dicamba is in the same group of chemicals as 2-4-D. The recent addition of theses herbicides to be used in post spraying of Soybeans has caused the drift issues. I believe this is the last year for using Dicamba on Soybeans after the plants are out of the ground. I think Dicamba will still be used post spraying on Corn in protects like Status. I did see some drift or moving of up to a mile on beans not traited with Dicamba genetics "engenia". Interestingly enough although the effected plants had curled leaves and signs of stunting there was minimal yield loss. 

[Southside]

I know that modern ag is all about chemicals.

What is so ironic is that there is a ginormous customer base for non gmo, chemical free food.   They will happily pay a massive premium for such products and demand far outstrips supply and it growing every day.  mRNA woke up a lot of people.  Perfect example is our chicken breast.  We start our meat birds as eggs in our commercial incubator so I can guarantee they are not vaccinated with mRNA or anything else, raised on pasture, soy free, non-gmo, zero chemical use on the farm, we sell it for $14 a lb and can not keep it in stock. My competition gets $21 but he has name recognition all the way literally to the King of England so I can't compete with that.  If guys would peek outside of the box they would realize there are options that don't include being hitched to Bayer.