Support Funding Programs for Healthier Farming

From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):

It’s creeping across the countryside, causing more and more damage every year.¹ It’s harming crops and other plants, burning the edges of their leaves with its caustic touch. And everything we’ve tried so far to stop it hasn’t worked.

It may sound scary, but this isn’t a horror movie monster. It’s very real: The widely used pesticide, dicamba, which is notorious for not staying where it’s sprayed.

Our agricultural system today relies on toxic chemicals like dicamba to function — but it doesn’t have to be this way. More than a decade of science shows that diversifying and rotating our crops can cut down the need for chemicals by up to 88 percent.²

Transforming our agricultural system won’t be easy, but it’s possible. We can start by calling on Congress at https://pennenvironment.webaction.org/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=35186 to fund programs that help farmers diversify their crops and reduce chemical use.

Dicamba works for big agricultural operations because Monsanto sells seeds that are engineered to safely withstand being sprayed by it. But that’s cold comfort for the millions of acres of other, non-resistant plants that get burned when dicamba drifts away from where it was applied.³

The EPA has tried to get a handle on dicamba’s dangerous drifting by restricting its use over the past two years, but the damage just keeps getting worse.⁴ It’s clear that it’s time to rethink how we grow our food — the overuse of toxic pesticides like dicamba is simply unsustainable.

Giant swaths of farmland in America are dedicated solely to corn or soy. Simply adding a greater variety of regionally appropriate crops to this rotation creates healthier farms that let the ecosystem do the work we rely on chemicals for today.⁵

Change in our farms can start with changes to farm policy. Ask your legislators to invest in agriculture programs that help farmers reduce their pesticide use.

Rethinking the way we farm will solve more problems than just the danger of dicamba. With more sustainable, diversified farms across the country, we could see reductions in the use of all pesticides.

That would be a game-changer for wildlife. Pesticides are a major culprit for some of the most startling animal population declines we know of. Colony collapse disorder in honeybees has been strongly linked to neonicotinoid pesticides. And we now know that neonicotinoids can kill migrating birds, too — chilling news that came fresh on the heels of the discovery that North America has lost 3 billion of its birds since 1970.⁶

We can make our environment healthier with healthier farms. Send your message to Congress today.

1. Johnathan Hettinger, “Dicamba complaints continue despite federal, state efforts,” AP News, August 30, 2019.
2. “Frequently Asked Questions about cropping system diversity and profitability,” Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, last accessed October 2, 2019.
3. Johnathan Hettinger, “Dicamba complaints continue despite federal, state efforts,” AP News, August 30, 2019.
4. Johnathan Hettinger, “Dicamba complaints continue despite federal, state efforts,” AP News, August 30, 2019.
5. “Frequently Asked Questions about cropping system diversity and profitability,” Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, last accessed October 2, 2019.
6. Karin Brulliard, “North America has lost 3 billion birds in 50 years,” The Washington Post, September 19, 2019.