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When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approves new uses for an herbicide known to drift, what does it receive? A lawsuit. In the suit, four nonprofits, including the National Family Farm Coalition, Center for Biological Diversity, Pesticide Action & Agroecology Network, and Center for Food Safety, challenged the use of the herbicide Dicamba.
The EPA signed and published its new registration and use permissions for Dicamba on February 20, 2026. That same day, the coalition filed its lawsuit challenging the new uses, which allow Dicamba to be sprayed in July and August, not just June. The EPA also eliminated the previous 100-foot buffer to protect endangered species and their habitat.
The lawsuit claimed that the new EPA regulations violate the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Endangered Species Act. The challenged order authorizes the over-the-top application of Dicamba products to genetically engineered cotton and soybeans engineered to tolerate Dicamba. Previous federal court decisions in 2020 and 2024 stopped the EPA’s approvals of Dicamba. In both decisions, the court found that the new-use registrations for Dicamba violated the FIFRA.
“EPA’s re-registration of Dicamba flies in the face of a decade of damning evidence, real-world farming know-how and sound science, and, oh-by-the-way, the law.” George Kimbrell, legal director of the Center for Food Safety
A 2021 report by the EPA’s Office of Inspector General found that the 2018 decision to expand registrations for three Dicamba pesticide products “varied from typical operating procedures.” The federal agency failed to conduct the required internal peer review of scientific documents. The Inspector General also found that senior leaders were “more involved in the Dicamba decision than in other pesticide registration decisions,” which “led to senior-level changes to or omissions from scientific documents.”
Dicamba’s Drift Harms Pollinators
Dicamba drift impacts plant-pollinators, as a 2025 study found. Researchers exposed 11 weed species to the herbicide and found damage to them from Dicamba drift. Dicamba drift affects nearby crops. An area the size of New Jersey, more than five million acres of crops, has been harmed by Dicamba since the EPA conditionally registered three new formulations of it in 2016.
Researchers specifically found that plants exposed to Dicamba drift had fewer pollinators. Regina Baucom, who led the study for the University of Michigan, characterized the herbicide as being “moderately toxic to humans and wildlife.” Soybeans and other genetically modified crops were originally designed to tolerate another herbicide called RoundUp. However, weeds have gradually built up a tolerance to it. Hence, the reason for the development of Dicamba-tolerant crops.
Pollinators are necessary for the food supply. About 35 percent of the world’s food crops need pollinators to reproduce, or one out of every three bites of food we eat. Insect pollination alone is worth $34 billion annually in the U.S. Honey bees alone are worth $5.4 billion. A wide variety of crops depend on pollination, including almonds, apples, blueberries, cherries, alfalfa, tomatoes, and pumpkins.
