Retired Arkansas weed scientist Ford Baldwin wants Midwest growers to learn from what happened in his state before it’s too late for them. “The story I try to tell in the Midwest is how we basically have lost the world’s greatest herbicide technology in the south in Roundup Ready,” Ford said at a Bayer CropScience Respect the Rotation field day in Collinsville, IL. “If the Midwest farmer gets proactive now, I think you guys still have a chance to save that technology.”
Ford explained how glyphosate has failed in the south on driver weeds like Palmer pigweed, waterhemp, ragweed and mare’s tail. “And the driver weeds, if you don’t control them, nothing else matters,” he said, and the key to that is rotation. “The key is first being proactive. A weed doesn’t have a brain, surely we can be smarter than a weed.”
Listen to my interview with Ford here: Ford Baldwin of Arkansas
University of Arkansas weed scientist Jason Norsworthy also spoke at the Bayer event and also stressed the need to be proactive. “Rotate technologies, use other herbicide modes of action before you lose glyphosate,” he said. “A single escape within a field is going to rapidly result in complete failure and loss of a herbicide.”
Jason says it was 2005 when they found their first glyphosate-resistant population of pigweed in Arkansas. “As of last year, we’re estimating that we’ve got in excess of 2.5 million acres of resistant Palmer amaranth,” he said. “Once you lose a herbicide, you’ve lost it for good.”
Listen to my interview with Jason here: Univ of Ark weed scientist Jason Norsworthy