Letter to the Editor

Chemical trespassing

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Pesticides and herbicides are destroying many families' way of life in the Bootheel.

Many of us enjoy planting a garden and having fruit trees. Personally, it's always been a favorite moment of mine each summer to bite into a ripe fresh tomato pulled right off the vine. As Southerners we take pride in our gardens. I take pride in feeding my grandchildren from it. Not this year!

After experiencing dicamba (a plant killer used by farmers) drift, my garden is completely destroyed. A Missouri Department of Health official called the Bootheel an "enigma." Sadly, we were informed by the Department of Agriculture, that they would not be able to investigate due to a lack of resources in our area. The farmer that owns the property beside me said that I couldn't prove it was drift from the spraying on his land.

You see, dicamba and other chemicals can move. They relocate depending on wind speed and heat. Dicamba is more volatile so it can move further in the air. The crops are sprayed and drift kills our oak trees, gardens, flowers, bushes, and fruit trees. No one can prove whose fault it was when this destructive chemical drift happens, so your property is destroyed and the chemical trespass goes unpunished.

Since when in America has destruction of property been something we all have to accept with no accountability to the perpetrators? Local vegetable gardens all over the Bootheel have been destroyed by dicamba for the last 3 years.

Over 800,000 acres in the Bootheel are sprayed with dicamba at least twice in a planting season. In 2017, the Bootheel region accounted for two-thirds of the Missouri Department of Health's dicamba complaints. We are called an "enigma," which means a mystery, a puzzle. The only thing I am puzzled about is why we are accepting this.

My question is, what are we going to do about it? Is gardening and healthy, homegrown, pesticide and herbicide-free food going to become a thing of the past? Will we let it?

-- Sharon Dordon

Bernie, Mo.