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IPFS News Link • Agriculture

Monsanto offers cash to U.S. farmers who use controversial chemical

• yahoo.com by Tom Polansek

The incentive to use XtendiMax with VaporGrip, a herbicide based on a chemical known as dicamba, could refund farmers over half the sticker price of the product in 2018 if they spray it on soybeans Monsanto engineered to resist the weed killer, according to company data.

The United States faced an agricultural crisis this year caused by new formulations of dicamba-based herbicides, which farmers and weed experts say harmed crops because they evaporated and drifted away from where they were sprayed.

Monsanto says XtendiMax is safe when properly applied. The company is banking on the chemical and soybean seeds engineered to resist it, called Xtend, to dominate soybean production in the United States, the world's second-largest exporter.


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