Weed Expert Outlines Post-Roundup World For ND Farmers; "It Got Ugly In A Hurry"
FARGO — Ford Baldwin painted a bleak picture of weed control at a recent workshop here exploring the future of ag production. "When we delivered the message in Arkansas, our farmers didn't listen," he said. "A lot of them tell me they wish they had."
Baldwin, of Practical Weed Consultants, a crop-consulting business in Arkansas, talked at the "Sow What Now?" workshop about how herbicide-resistant weeds like Palmer amaranth have taken over entire fields in just a few years. "It got ugly in a hurry," he said. "You can choose to do what we did and go there, or you can choose to change your programs and do something different."
Roundup (a herbicide with the active ingredient glyphosate) changed everything about agriculture because it was 100 percent weed control, Baldwin said. "It brought an efficiency we never dreamed of," he said. It was also cheaper than the herbicides farmers had been using. But the ease and cost savings made farmers and retailers complacent, Baldwin said.
Herbicides are failing one at a time because there's not enough chemical diversity and farmers have been reactive instead of proactive, he said. "We've got to break that habit," he said. To win, he said farmers need to use strategies like tillage diversity, cover crops, wise crop rotation and zero weed tolerance. "If you manage every field you've got like you've got a resistance problem, you probably won't get it," he said. Liberty herbicide, which uses glufosinate, is working against some of the weeds that have shown glyphosate resistance, but Baldwin cautioned that using only that will lead to the same problems farmers now face.
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http://www.inforum.com/news/3934810-arkansas-weed-expert-warns-nd-farmers-about-herbicide-resistance
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