Following a $15 million award for compensatory damages, a federal jury has awarded a Missouri peach farm $250 million in punitive damages in its dicamba drift case against Bayer and BASF.

There’s a growing sense of unease among pesticide officials and retailers dealing with a third straight year of off-target movement of dicamba onto nearby crops and other vegetation.

I’m flat busted. My Missouri corn and soybean farm is bankrupt, financially incompetent, a lousy credit risk, upside down--you pick the financial euphemism for a balance sheet that is downright ugly. I’m still paying my bills on time and eating good, due to some profitable years in the recent past, but any honest appraisal of my farm’s future income and liabilities is dark indeed. Of course, if there is any comfort to be found in shared misery, every other producer of corn and soybeans in the U.S. is in the same position.