A federal appeals court has ruled EPA’s approval of dicamba products has ended effective immediately. This includes XtendiMax, Engenia and FeXapan. SDSU Extension Weed Science Coordinator Paul Johnson says this means it’s illegal to spray these herbicides on dicamba tolerant soybeans, which he estimates make up around half the soybean acres in South Dakota.

However, he says this could be reversed if EPA answers the court, which could happen in the next few days.

Farmers can still spray conventional herbicides over the top, including Roundup, which isn’t effective on some resistant weeds. And the court order did not include Tavium from Syngenta.

The ruling only applies to this year’s registration.

This ruling was the result of a lawsuit first filed in 2017 by a group of farm and environmental groups, which argued that EPA violated both its governing law (the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act, FIFRA), and the Endangered Species Act when it registered XtendiMax. The case was re-filed in 2019 and expanded to include EPA’s 2018 re-registration of three dicamba herbicides, Engenia, XtendiMax and FeXapan.