{"id":4905,"date":"2018-02-16T18:18:21","date_gmt":"2018-02-16T18:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/?p=4905"},"modified":"2019-04-16T18:30:43","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T18:30:43","slug":"emmett-clinic-drafts-amicus-brief-explaining-dicamba-harms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/2018\/02\/16\/emmett-clinic-drafts-amicus-brief-explaining-dicamba-harms\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmett Clinic Drafts Amicus Brief Explaining Dicamba Harms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>February 16, 2018 &#8211; Today, the Emmett Clinic filed an <a href=\"http:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/files\/2018\/02\/FFD-Amicus-Brief-w-Paper-Format-Certificate.pdf\">amicus brief<\/a> in a 9th Circuit case challenging the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s approval of Monsanto\u2019s XtendiMax\u2014a new formulation of the highly-volatile and toxic herbicide dicamba.\u00a0 EPA conditionally approved the product in 2016, based in part on Monsanto\u2019s assurances that its formulation was less volatile than previous dicamba formulations.\u00a0 Environmental and farming organizations challenged this decision in court.<\/p>\n<p>Monsanto developed this new herbicide in response to increasing resistance to glyphosate (Roundup) in weeds.\u00a0 Although dicamba is normally lethal to broadleaf crops such as soybeans and cotton, Monsanto genetically engineered varieties of these crops to be resistant to dicamba.\u00a0 During the application process, commenters warned EPA that dicamba is very volatile and therefore has a tendency to drift, risking harm to other farmers\u2019 fields or native vegetation.\u00a0 As the Clinic\u2019s brief explains, EPA\u2019s approval of the herbicide resulted in widespread harm throughout the South and Midwest in 2017: at least 3.6 million acres of soybeans in 24 states were damaged by dicamba drift.\u00a0 Farmers who want to plant soybeans feel that they have lost their freedom of choice: either they plant Monsanto\u2019s resistant seeds or risk having their crops killed by drift from a neighboring farmer\u2019s field.\u00a0 EPA should not place farmers in this untenable position.<\/p>\n<p>The Emmett Clinic filed this brief on behalf of several farmer support organizations: Family Farm Defenders, Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, Iowa Organic Association, Kansas Rural Center, Organic Farmers\u2019 Agency for Relationship Marketing, Inc., Organic Farmers Association, and Save Our Crops Coalition.\u00a0 Clinic student Heather Romero (JD \u201919) and Deputy Director Shaun Goho wrote the brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>February 16, 2018 &#8211; Today, the Emmett Clinic filed an amicus brief in a 9th Circuit case challenging the Environmental&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clinic-publications","category-news","post-archive"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4905\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clinics.law.harvard.edu\/environment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}