Monsanto is offering nearly 50 percent cash back to farmers who use its products containing dicamba.
According to a report in Reuters, the company announced that the offer will be available to farmers who use it on soybeans in conjunction with seeds engineered to resist the chemical.
Dicamba has been the subject of growing regulatory scrutiny around the country as several farmers have complained that the chemical drifts between farms and ruins crops.
BASF and DowDuPont also sell products containing dicamba. Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reached a deal with all three companies to institute new labeling and usage requirements to help limit the potential damage to other fields.
Meanwhile, several state regulatory bodies have been mulling different measures to appease the growing throngs of farmers who have complained about dicamba. North Dakota, for example, is planning to restrict its usage to when temperatures are above 85 degrees F. Missouri is looking at its own restrictions while Arkansas might ban the use of the chemical all together.
Under the cash-back incentive being promoted by Monsanto, the cost of using its dicamba product called XtendiMax will drop from about $11 per acre to $6 per acre.
Despite the increased regulations, the company still predicts that famers in the U.S. will plant the soybean seeds meant to be used with XtendiMax on about 40 million acres.
