You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Maddie's the fire here with Dan Charles Food and Agriculture correspondent Hey Dan.

Hi Maddie.

So Dan you've been following this really interesting story for years now.

It involves farmers, scientists, a giant corporation and damage to millions and millions of acres

of crops.

It is huge.

But let me start with this one farmer in southeastern Missouri, a peach farmer.

A few years ago he started noticing this strange and disturbing thing.

The leaves on his peach trees were just kind of curling up.

He was one of the first to see this but in the years since there have been thousands and

thousands of farmers have seen the same thing all across the Midwest from Minnesota in

the north down to Mississippi in the south.

And at this point they pretty much know what's happening.

This is damage from a particular weed killer that neighboring farmers are spraying.

So other farmers spray it on their own crops but it can travel to neighboring farms.

Right.

And it's a specific weed killer called Dicamba which has gotten really popular just in

the last few years especially among soybean farmers.

Well that peach farmer I mentioned he is in court right now in Missouri.

He has filed a lawsuit over this.

And what's interesting to me is that this farmer is not suing his neighbors.

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