Here’s what we know in Illinois in September 2019: The Illinois Department of Agriculture had received 937 total herbicide complaints as of Sept. 13. Of those, 708 were related to dicamba.
 
In 2018: 330 dicamba-related complaints. In 2017: 246 dicamba-related complaints. Before in-season dicamba, from 1989 to 2016, total ag and non-ag complaints averaged about a hundred a year.
 
Clearly, those numbers are going the wrong way. And 937 complaints is more than any other state, which is a problem for the leading soybean-producing state in the nation — enough so that IDOA convened a group of stakeholders for a series of meetings this month, which began this week. The goal: Figure out what to do in 2020. According to Doug Owens, IDOA bureau chief of environmental programs, “Everything’s on the table.”
 
You may recall in early 2019 that IDOA Director John Sullivan set a June 30 cutoff date for in-season dicamba application. This was the first time IDOA, under new leadership, sought restrictions on top of the federal EPA label. By mid-June, the department eyeballed the historically delayed planting season and extended the cutoff to July 15.
 
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