A large crowd gathered inside the Hopewell Baptist Church for the 24th annual Southeast Indiana No-Till Breakfast. Hosted in Ripley County by the Ripley County Soil and Water Conservation District, it’s known as a meeting for farmers. Come with a question, and you can get an answer. Someone will have experience with your issue.

But this year a farmer asked a question about herbicide drift that no one in the room, not even weed scientists and Extension educators, could answer. “If I do follow the label completely and do everything right, then I should not be liable or held accountable if the product drifts and causes damage anyway — isn’t that correct?"

We sought out two people in a better position to answer this question. As it turns out, even though the farmer’s reasoning makes sense, he’s most likely not off the hook if drift occurs.

“That’s just not a true statement,” says Fred Whitford, director of Purdue University Pesticide Programs. “If drift occurs, you’re still going to be considered responsible. You will still be liable for the damage.”

How can that be? First, particularly with labels for the new dicamba-based herbicides, the nature of the label makes it nearly impossible to comply completely with every standard on the label, he says.  Labels for these new herbicides are so complex and require attention to such minute detail that it will be difficult for anyone to comply 100% in every case.

Second, Whitford says, labels are written with disclaimers that protect the manufacturer in case of drift. If drift occurs and an off-target crop belonging to someone else is damaged, expect to be involved in the investigation process.

What labels say
Dave Scott is the pesticide administrator with the Office of the Indiana State Chemist. OISC is charged with enforcing compliance with laws related to pesticides.

“You need to read and understand the entire label,” he says. “As we have preached for many years, the label is the law. Unfortunately, there isn’t consistency from label to label in the type of standards you must follow.”

There are two primary types of standards on some labels, he says: design standards and performance standards. The new dicamba labels include lots of design standards. Those are the statements such as you can’t spray if the wind is over a certain speed, or you can’t spray within so many feet of a sensitive crop.

There are also performance standards, Scott says. The performance standard on the XtendiMax label, for example, is quite specific. “It states that you should not allow drift onto a whole list of crops and plants with green foliage, even in greenhouses, and not allow physical damage to any of those crops and plants.

“That means that even if you follow all the design standards that are listed on the label, you still have to meet the performance standard,” Scott explains. “The performance standard basically says you must apply the product without causing drift that damages off-target plants or crops.

“If drift occurs and there is damage, you don’t meet the performance standard. If you don’t meet the performance standard, you violated the label.”

Some herbicide labels only include one type of standard. Some include neither. In any case, the bottom line is that if drift occurs, you aren’t off the hook just because you attempted to follow the recommendations on the label.