Dicamba Cut-Off for Minnesota in 2020

Today the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) announced that cutoff date for applying dicamba in Minnesota to dicamba tolerant soybeans will be June 20, 2020. The formulations included are XtendiMax by Monsanto, Engenia by BASF, FeXapan by DuPont and Tavium by Syngenta.

"Dicamba is an important tool for combating herbicide resistant weeds in dicamba soybeans," said Agriculture Commissioner Thom Peterson. "the MDA wishes to preserve this toll for farmers; however, it's also important to limit impacts on neighboring homes, farms and gardens. We have seen continued improvement of the use of these products because of the June 20 cut-off date, and that's why we are moving forward with this again in 2020."

Many farmers have struggled with getting dicamba applied by the June 20 cut-off date because of the weather. They were hoping the cut-off date would have been extended last summer and for 2020. However, when you look at the number of reports of crop damage from alleged dicamba off target movement they have decreased sharply after the June 20 cut-off was established.

In 2017 the MDA received 253 reports of alleged dicamba drift that affected an estimated 265,000 acres. In 2018 the June 20 cut-off was implemented. The number of complaints dropped to just 53 with only 1,800 affected. This last summer there were only 22 reports that affected 760 acres. Looking at the data, it is not a surprise the MDA is staying with the June 20 cut-off date for applying dicamba.