In a blockbuster announcement by two companies well-known to no-tillers, Monsanto Company and Landec Corp. announced two separate deals that they say will make their products more available.

A proposed international trade agreement could lead to a huge increase in ethanol imports, which in turn could prevent no-tillers from capitalizing on the growing use of corn-based ethanol for fuel, according to a group critical of the trade proposal.

No-tillers growing non-biotech crops in which genetically modified crops are also growing due to wind-blown pollen or volunteer plants from a previous year’s seeds are liable to be sued by Monsanto Company, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Food Safety. So are no-tillers who grow biotech crops without signing Monsanto’s technology agreement, the group says.

In granting a limited exemption to a ban on myclobutanil herbicides, the Environmental Protection Agency may have taken the first step toward arming farmers with additional chemicals they could use to fight the potentially devastating soybean rust disease, which is expected to arrive in the United States in the near future.

Low-interest loans — perhaps even interest free with the possibility of partial payment of the principal by the federal government might be obtainable through a program sponsored by the Environmental Protection Agency.

After more than a year of analysis, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently placed its recommendations regarding herbicide-drift tolerance on hold. That’s because EPA officials received more than 5,000 letters, phone calls and other feedback from farmers, ag dealers and educators who felt the recommendations were unfair.

After starting in 1972, one of the first questions our editors asked seed companies concerned which varieties and hybrids were most suited for no-till. It’s a question we’ve continued to ask for 28 years as most companies have been reluctant to run the specialized cold tolerance tests that are essential in identifying these varieties and hybrids.

On June 16, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) registered Gauntlet, a new pre-emergence soybean herbicide from the FMC Agricultural Products Group. This herbicide combines sulfentrazone, the active ingredient in Authority, with cloransulam-methyl, the active ingredient in FirstRate, a herbicide which is manufactured and marketed by Dow AgroSciences.

It appears the answer is no at this time, but it was possible for a few weeks earlier this spring.

Development of herbicide-resistant soybeans, along with a drop in herbicide prices for conventionally bred soybeans, has saved U.S. farmers millions of dollars during the past 3 years.