00:00 We're talking about strategies for pigweed control amid herbicide resistance issues In this edition of Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve. 00:11 Welcome to Extreme ags Cutting the Curve Podcast, where you get a guaranteed return on investment of your time as we cut your learning curve with the information you can apply to your farming operation 00:24 immediately. Extreme ag, we've already made the mistakes so you don't have to. Managing your farm's water resources is a critical component to a successful and 00:35 sustainable farming operation. Advanced drainage systems helps farmers just like you increase their yields up to 30% with their technologically advanced water management products. 00:47 Visit ad s pipe.com to see how they can keep your business flowing. Now, here's your host, Damien Mason. Hey 00:55 There. Welcome to Extreme Ask. Cutting the curve. Got a fantastic episode for you about a growing problem that is something that was brought up by our man, Matt Swanson, joining me on this call. Matt Swanson, 01:06 affiliate with extreme Ag out of Western Illinois. Caleb Trau, uh, aggro agronomic consultant in the south, principally in Georgia, uh, 01:14 and extreme AG affiliate. And then of course, Blair Colvin, who is a tech service manager with F M C 01:21 Pigweed. When it was presented to me, it was from you, Matt Swanson. And then I found out that pigweed is the layman's term for water hemp and Palmer 01:31 amreth, which of course have been something that we've been hearing about for more than a decade here in agriculture. So you sent a tweet to everybody, I'm sorry, 01:38 a text to everybody talking about this issue. What brought it up? Because I said this is something we have to cover. 01:44 Yeah. I saw a, uh, tweet from an Iowa state, uh, weeded scientist that they were talking about another, uh, growth regulator or two four D and dicamba resistant water hemp population in 01:55 Iowa. And in the, in the text of the conversation, Mike and Evans and I got to talking about the different chemistries that we were trying or moving in to use on soybeans that were also, 02:07 or also important for corn. And, and I said, I think we're gonna get to the point where we're not gonna have any chemistries for corn because we keep using our corn chemistries to try to manage new, 02:18 you know, new populations or new resistant populations. And so, All right, you cover a lot of ground between a couple of states. Uh, Caleb, 02:25 how big is this problem? It's definitely something that requires our attention because one thing that I think about is we control is one of the prerequisites to 02:36 everything else that we do on, at, at the fields level, because it doesn't matter what kind of foliar applications we're making, it doesn't matter what our harvest moisture is, 02:46 it doesn't matter any other thing that we're doing if we don't control these weeds. And there's some, 02:53 been some headlines recently that are calling these pigweed species super weeds and getting everybody scared. 03:00 But there's things that we can do to get a hundred percent control on our fields. It may not be easy, it may not be cheap, 03:07 but there's something that we absolutely can do. Uh, but Blair, before I go to you from the farmer perspective, perspective, uh, I don't recall it being called pigweed around here. 03:16 How many different weeds are we talking about that are generically called pigweed, waterhemp and Palmer amaranth, which are kind of real closely related? 03:23 Are those the two? Yes. So for the pigweeds, we're referring to waterhemp is what's more prevalent in the Midwest and the further west you go. And then in the south where Caleb and I are, 03:36 Palmer amaranth is the one we're primarily focused on. Got it. So, uh, this is this derived from glyphosate overuse. Uh, I'll start and go around the horn again. Swanson did, did, 03:47 did we have these problems 40 years ago? I don't know. We had a harder, we, we weren't as good with, uh, chemistry 40 years ago probably to begin with. 03:54 But then we brought in, you know, glyphosate, is this a derivative of the glyphosate, um, everywhere on every acre for the last 20 years. 04:04 Uh, I mean in, in, in the pigweed species. And, and maybe Blair would know better, but this isn't a, it's not because we used glyphosate and overused it. This is what happened. 04:14 And now we have two, four D This is a issue with the plant itself, right? The plant or the family of species itself creates the issue by being so 04:22 adaptable, um, and, and putting out a lot of seed. And so we're not helping it by using all of these chemistries and, and in, in a lot of cases, 04:33 solely relying on these chemistries until they don't work anymore, right. For pigweed control. But it's, it's not a glyphosate issue. 04:40 Glyphosate or glyphosate resistance is a symptom of, of a natural process. Caleb, 04:45 You were nodding your head. For those that were listening and can't see the video, why are you nodding your head? Um, when, when I posed that question to Swanson, 04:54 Right? Because when we look at the, uh, history in terms of pigweed herbicide resistance, Roundup was actually not the first herbicide that pigweed developed that 05:06 resistance towards, like Matt mentioned, it is the plant itself. Uh, most plants are self pollinating, so they have male and female parts, 05:15 but with pigweed there are separate male and female plants. So they basically are creating natural hybrids that 05:24 adapt to each environment, which leads it to become very easy for them to develop resistance to whichever things that we throw at it. 05:35 I think one of the best things that's happened to extreme ag is bringing you on. I never in my life thought that I'd hear that we have in these weed species, 05:43 it's like corn, we, we got male and female plants. Is that what I just heard? Well, with other weeds, the male and female plants are, 05:52 Are on the same plant Together. So like corn, how you have the tassel on top and the ears down, so you only need one corn plant to produce, uh, the yield. 06:02 But with the pigweed you have separate plants. So you have many different combinations of genetics. The biodiversity can become very large. 06:13 Well, point is they've almost these plants, these weeds have the ability to almost hybridize. Right. 06:20 Okay. Uh, Blair, talk to me about, uh, we're gonna talk about obviously control. This is all about strategies for control. 06:27 You talked about where these weeds are found. How big is the problem? Uh, agronomically? How big is the problem economically? 06:37 Both. It's a huge problem from both perspectives. So in the south, I mean agronomic, I mean, we're to the point you're using multiple chemistries, 06:46 herbicides, and also even hand weeding to control this weeded. So when you start looking at paying for several different herbicide applications 06:55 and then putting, you know, humans out there pulling the weeds up, I mean, you're looking at in many cases, a hundred bucks an acre or more, um, 07:04 depending on the crop and how bad it is, the field history. Um, so yeah, it's a huge problem for both aspects. 07:13 Okay. Then I wanna hear about the economic aspect of it. You just talked about the cost of control. Mm-hmm. 07:20 Cost of yield drag. Let's go around Horgan. Matt Swanson. Are you seeing a yield drag in Western Illinois because of these weeds? 07:28 It depends. It depends. And I know you hate those kind of answers, but that's really the answer, the best answer. So, you know, 07:34 on our non G M O soybeans, generally we can control them to the point that the beans get really large. Um, but the grain fill portion is, 07:43 is there's beans develop a significant amount of yield off of grain field, just like corn does. 07:49 And depending on how thick that population is or how well you've controlled it, you know, you're essentially inserting a weeded that's very fast growing, 07:57 very resource hungry into an environment where you need those resources to grow grain. So it can be significant yielded. 08:04 Caleb, do you have a, do you have a rough number? Like if I said, Hey, I've got the, I've got this client, 08:10 which you do that has this tremendous problem with the, which one's more prevalent more in your area? Water hemp is more prevalent in your area. 08:17 Palmer am Palmer Amrith is the one that's more prevalent in your area. And can you like, look at this field and say, that's probably gonna be 20% deduct, 08:25 that's gonna be a 15. I mean, can you look at it and say, I'm wanna say that you're not gonna be happy with the yield If you have a weeded 08:32 problem in that field, that's what you go through any spot of the field with a combine where you have a weeded issue and you look at that yield monitor and guaranteed it is 08:42 going to be dropping off by a certain percent. I know there's been a little bit of research in some crops that are saying that they can lose 80 to 90% of yield. 08:52 I've seen weed disasters where we hit a hot, dry spell the, the crops that we plant succumb because all the weeds are sucking up the 09:01 nutrients, and it could be up to a hundred percent. So it's a, it's a wide range, 09:06 but it's something that can give us a very good return on investment with the control of, 09:12 All right. Blair, you nod your head as well. Um, talk to me about the, the, the point that Matt Swanson brought to the very beginning, 09:19 we're throwing everything and the kitchen sink at this, uh, you know, it was glyphosate and then it's now versions of two four D. 09:26 Which one is the dicamba? I, I get confused here. One of 'em has a two four D derivative, et cetera. So walk me through the chemistry and tell me what we're doing and what is 09:34 working and what's not working as much anymore. Yeah, so that's a pretty, the big question that I can try to tackle. But when we're talking about chemistries and herbicide resistance in general, 09:45 by The way, Blair, I sent, I sent a list of questions that wasn't even on it, that wasn't even one that I wrote, was it? 09:51 I know it must not be, must be why I'm not prepared, I guess. But anyways, yeah. Um, so there's a lot of different chemistries for this problem, right? 09:59 And any weeded can develop resistance. I mean, we focus on glyphosate so much 'cause it gets that, all that media attention. But, um, 10:08 pig weeded or Palmer amaranth and Waterhemp have developed resistance to several different chemistries, 10:14 classes of chemistries that we use to control weeds. And so that's what Matt was referring to, having to throw everything at the kitchen sink. I mean, 10:22 the best thing you can do really, in my opinion, is focusing on those pre-emergent, re residual herbicides. So trying to control those weeds before they even come up, 10:34 using at least two modes of action in your pre-emergent herbicides initially. And then staying on time, 10:40 overlap those residuals so you don't lose the control there with the first chemistry layer you're putting down when you come back with your post control, 10:48 keep a residual in there. It's just that overlapping the chemistry so you don't lose control and try to keep the weeds from coming up as much as you can. 10:58 So it gets pretty complex trying to manage these weeds that have multiple resistances or one or the other. And does depend on the geography, which, 11:08 um, resistances, the pigweed has. So some of the pigweed in Georgia's resistance to different chemistries than in, you know, Illinois. So it's a lot to keep up with. 11:18 Okay, Caleb, are we gonna run out of tools? Are we gonna run outta weapons in our arsenal to take care of this? Well, 11:26 when you look at herbicides that are in the pipeline coming in the next few years, there's not a lot of new things. You know, 11:35 the companies are putting different chemistries together in the same jug, but we don't have a lot of new tools that we can expect in the next few 11:43 years, which means we need to get as much life out of the products that we're already using. So to Blair's point there, 11:51 we need to be using multiple effective modes of action with pretty much every herbicide pass that we're going out there, 11:58 because we have to do the best with what we have at our disposal right now. By the way, Matt, you're the farm guy, uh, o Blair Farms as well. Uh, 12:09 uh, this kind of most everything about agriculture we've gotten to where I'm not saying easier, like it, the, 12:16 there's not work involved generally compared to the old days. She talked about walking fields for god's sakes. 12:23 There's not a person younger than me that even remembers walking bean fields, for instance. Everything's gotten to where pushed the easy button, you know, 12:31 the, the G M O uh, resi, you know, the GMOs and the, the high glyphosate resistant stuff made our lives easier. What Caleb and Blair just talked about was changing your mixes, 12:43 changing your strategy, doing different stuff in different parts of the world. This is all, but this is absolutely going backwards. 12:49 This has not pushed the easy button. Well, and I, and I think you, there's definitely a case to be made that the easy button has got us to where 12:56 we're at today, right? So, I mean, when I was a little kid, we used to walk soybeans fields with hand sprayers of Roundup to, 13:03 to take out the water. He and, and the giant rag and things that we're getting through, then the soybeans became tolerant to it, 13:10 and we could just spray it over the top. And it's been since then a succession of different herbicides that we've tried to do that with. But the single mode of action, um, 13:20 thing doesn't work for Waterhemp just because of what Caleb's talking about in the, in the constant hybridization of it. So, and I mean, in Illinois water, 13:28 he's resistant to six different classes of herbicides. So if you get on your herbicide chart, there's not, when you think of six of them being gone, there's not that many, uh, 13:39 that are even effective as far as post-em control, especially. All right, here's a reality. 13:44 We can't even get employees to show up and drive a tractor in a lot of rural America. Uh, the, the, the, 13:53 the absolute premise of us trying to get a busload of kids to come out and walk a soybean field, it is not going to happen. Trust me. It's not going to. 14:02 So we better find a means of control. Um, will we, and, and if, and I mean, you're talking about changing the chemistry up. He just, Matt Swanson just says there's six different classes, 14:13 families of herbicides that have resistance. Go to Caleb first. You seem like you're ready to go. I hear from, uh, Blair. 14:20 Yeah. Well, fortunately in our area with some of the specialty crops that we have, we actually have a large pool of seasonal workers that 14:30 there's growers I work with that they'll have a crew come in and there will be 80 people getting off a bus, 14:36 and they will walk from one end of the field to the other end of the field to hand pull those last escapes. And something that we've done, 14:43 even on our own farm, where we have pigweed escapes, is we run a weeded wiper. So, uh, some versions are like a wick bar, basically. Uh, 14:54 the peanuts are 12 inches tall, but the pigweed is sticking up at 20, 24 inches. So we load up a rope or a weeded wiper with something like 15:06 Gramoxone, and we'll go out across the field to where only the pigweed are getting contacted, physically contacted with the herbicide. 15:15 So there are things that we can do to make sure that we have a hundred percent control, zero tolerance policy for pigweed. 15:23 It may require a little more time, a little more work, but it's something that we can't do. Caleb, by the way, the pipe wick was developed because, uh, 15:31 of running out of kids to go and walk soybean fields, it was used in conventional soybeans using Roundup in the pipe wick, like in the 1980s. So you're talking about using a pipe wick with Gramoxone. 15:44 How long Blair until Gramoxone doesn't work on these species? Well, I, I don't have a crystal ball. I mean, 15:51 but basically the principle of all this is if you utilize, you know, the same chemistry over and over that plant, there's a mutation, it will adapt. 16:01 And the reason it happens so quickly in pigweed species is 'cause they're such prolific seed producers. So you're talking, you know, 16:09 one plant can produce anywhere from depending on the conditions, 200,000 to o millions of seeds. And that's why in our area, 16:18 we have gone to these extreme measures of having people get off a bus, having even, you know, our kids, whatever. I mean, 16:24 when my younger sisters were growing up, that was their character development. I had them out there pulling pigweeds because it is worth it to even pull up 16:32 that one plant when it's gonna produce millions of seeds to go back in your seed bank for the next year. So part of managing pigweed other than just herbicide, 16:42 is managing that seed bank. And so there are some other things you can do there. You may not wanna go back to traditional tillage, but running a bottom plow, 16:51 burying the seed, there's also some, would you Call it running an autumn plow? Bottom plow? We call it a bottom plow. Okay, 16:58 So mobile Plow. But, um, wait, Wait, wait, wait. Now Caleb just talked about bringing back pipe wick, which was an eighties thing. You're talking about bringing back moldboard plows, 17:10 which was a, let's see, pioneer era technology. Uh, like that's how we broke the prairie. Uh, is that where we are? 17:21 That's what's crazy, right? So when I talk to weed scientists in our area, we talk about this problem, you know, we got these tolerant crops, 17:29 the easy button type thing, and now we're having to go back and pull out all of our weeded control methods from years ago to deal with 17:37 These. I'm I, by the way, I am, I'm so glad tillage that was on the list of questions that we sent you about tillage. We're gonna get into that. But before we get into tillage, 17:44 I wanna talk about the seed issue and then we'll get into tillage these seeds. Um, Matt Swanson. Blair says, you're talking about millions of seeds per plant. 17:53 Uh, not, I'm not being fatalistic. It seems like the problem is almost, it's like, it's like trying to control, uh, you know, something that's just, uh, you know, a breakout of, uh, you know, 18:06 flies or something. Like how the hell do you control if there's that many seeds on one plant and then it can almost hybridize itself as Caleb was talking about, 18:14 are we fighting losing battle? Well, that's, I mean, that's, that was the gist of why I texted that, right? It, it seems like we continue to make the same mistake over and over again. Well, 18:23 we'll do this, well, we'll do enlist, well, we'll do H P P D. We've seen this story play out for, hey, 18:30 For a, for a person that's kind, for a person that's is little, uh, advises as little chemistry as me. I mean, my purchase of chemistry is, uh, 18:38 two and a half gallons of two four D and five gallons of glyphosate per year to spray my fence lines and my driveway and my trails in my woods. 18:45 I don't even know what H P P D is. What is that? So H P P D is a group 27 herbicide. It's, it's one that we've typically used for corn, okay. Um, for waterhemp control. 18:54 Okay? But it's, it's, I don't, maybe Blair can answer this question. I don't know if it's commercially available today, but it's the next thing, 19:01 right? In the battle against pigweed, Hds have been out, but basically to the former layman, they're called bleacher herbicide. 19:10 So they're the ones that turn 'em white when you to kill weeds. The chemistry has been out for a while. 19:16 The H p p do h tolerance soybeans are a new thing. Correct. All right, Caleb, 19:22 what of I usually you are really good about observing and then you have a comment to make, but you're so polite you won't, uh, 19:29 in insinuate yourself into this, right? They both just talked about this. Are we, are we fighting losing battle? 19:37 No, because we can still control them. It takes a little work because we discussed, but we can, and one thing with those seed is that they can remain viable for many years. 19:47 So if we have one pigweed in a field that we, uh, that's an escape and it goes to seed and we just run the combine through it and it spreads that seed out over a 20 foot by 20 foot area, 20:02 well now next year we're going to have, you know, even if it's 50% of viability, we can still have a half a million weeds. 20:10 So it can balloon even if we, if we don't control that a hundred percent. And one thing that I'll do want to mention is that a dead weeded can never 20:20 become a resistant weeded. So we can spray a chemistry on it, but it can't kill it. 80% dead, it has to kill it a hundred percent dead. 20:31 So whatever we need to do to get that a hundred percent dead weeded, that weed is safe. We don't have to worry about it ever building resistance. 20:39 Caleb, every now and again, you come up with like something that I'm not gonna forget. Dead men don't talk dead weeds can't build resistance. That is, 20:48 that's, that's profound. I like it. So here's the thing. This is maybe get a little bit out there. Uh, and Blair's the, 20:54 the technical one, uh, maybe not on Zoom calls, but she is with chemistry, uh, chemistry a lot of times works by it. It makes the thing, you know, uh, 21:05 you know, the cells grow and the cell walls break. And I'm going through different modes of action. Is there a mode of action? Is there a, 21:12 is there a chemistry in development that has the ability to sterilize the seed? 21:20 Because that would seem to me for something that is this prolific the best shot we have at, uh, 100% effective control? 21:32 I'm not aware of anything specifically to sterilize the seed. I mean, there other looks at other types of technology and doing things with d n A in 21:41 the plant and other things to try to take a different approach than the traditional modes of actions and obviously looking and developing new 21:50 modes of action. But what Caleb said is a hundred percent true. You can't always rely on the chemistry to a hundred percent kill them either. 21:57 'cause there's a whole piece of that that goes with timing. If you come out late and spray and that pigweed is too large and it doesn't 22:05 die all the way, you know, you're contributing to resistance. And it got me thinking too, Caleb, about in our area with the hand weeding. 22:12 Another thing that's interesting about this species is if you don't remove that weeded from the field and you just drop it, you know, on the ground, 22:22 it will actually re-root itself and come back. I mean, so it yeah, that's, Doesn't, that's, 22:26 It's crazy. So if, yeah, That's one pic one that our Go ahead. Yeah. To get 'em out is all I was thinking. So 22:36 Yeah, there's, there's a picture that I took last year that it makes it into every presentation. And I show everybody, 22:43 and it's a pigweed that was say waist high, chest high. It was pulled outta the field and laid on the end row. And the weeded is now broken down dead, 22:54 and there is a ring all the way around where that pig weeded is laying dead on the ground with about 500,000 weeded. So, I mean, case in point, 23:05 Uh, you guys got me a little scared, to be honest with you. I didn't think this is such a threat, but I mean, 23:09 this is like the kudzu of crop, uh, of crop production because, uh, it's, it seems like it's, you know, the old story that, uh, 23:18 the Portuguese fishermen, uh, when the starfish came in, in their, in their, uh, fish nets, they would cut 'em in pieces and fling 'em back off the boat. 23:25 And all that did was a starfish starfish piece would then, uh, proliferate and become another starfish. This is like, 23:32 how the hell are we gonna do this? Um, tillage you started talking about a little bit ago. So who wants to take tillage? I guess start with Blair. 23:41 She called him up. What do you call again? A bottom plow? Bottom plow. I guess that's what we call it in Georgia, Alabama. I don't know. 23:48 But anyways, that, for those that don't use that terminology, you know, traditional deep tillage, 23:54 moldboard plow has been used in some weeded management trying to flip that whole chunk of soil and bury those seeds to get some time to try to manage 24:03 your seed bank. On the flip end of that, also conservation tillage is used trying to, you know, you've got the residue there to help keep weeds from coming up any shade 24:14 coverage. So trying to keep your crop growing as quickly as possible to get canopy coverage, you know, things like that. And that's not tillage, 24:20 but basically there's methods you can use with typical, you know, traditional tillage or conservation tillage to try to help with weeded 24:28 management. Matt Swanson tillage to me seems like a great way to just continue to cultivate more of these seeds based on what I have learned when, when Caleb tells me, 24:37 you pull the weed, you put it down on the end row and lay it there, like it's gonna die. All it does is then create a half million more, uh, 24:45 seedlings. It seems to me that tillage might just be compounding the problem by actually just spreading more seed. Is am I, what do you think? 24:54 Well, what Blair's talking about is she's, she's, you're talking about inverting the whole top eight to 12 inches and burying the seed itself and, and it's not gonna germinate from that depth. 25:03 So that's that's the But also, but but is it rot? Does it rot from down there? If you sat it there long enough, yeah. 25:10 If you have to flip it back over before too long and bring it back to the surface, 25:13 That's my concern. Yeah, The Whole, you gotta pick your methods, right? Like it's multiple different things altogether. So 25:21 Caleb, are we gonna start, are we are, are we honest to God? Are we going back, are we going back in time? We're gonna now be out moldboard plowing, uh, 25:28 and then all of a sudden we gotta start going 30 inch rows and then running a cultivator six times, uh, 25:33 through the rows like we used to in the 1960s and seventies. It's funny that you mentioned that because as you were talking tillage, 25:41 the first thing that popped up on my mind was cultivation. Yeah. So that, you know, that's something that we do in, you know, unique situations. I, 25:51 I really don't like road cultivation. Uh, in 2023, there are instances where we have a bunch of pigweed and we can't get out there and we have to do what we have to do. Uh, so yeah, 26:03 what goes around comes around. We we're now having to go back to these, some of these similar methods and their tools. 26:10 We use 'em in the right situation. But when we look at the situation that we had before, herbicide traded crops is somewhat similar situation where we 26:21 don't have a lot of effective chemistries. So we either have to use the ones that are effective really well or utilize some of these other techniques. 26:29 Blair, should I be going to every farm auction in the United States of America and buying up old moldboard plows and old, uh, 26:37 row cultivators for basically the price of scrap metal. Then little reconditioning take him over to Swanson's shop. He just like sandblast 'em, paints 'em a little bit, shines them up, 26:47 and then all of a sudden one year from now we're gonna be selling these things like hotcakes. 26:53 I don't know that I'd recommend that, but um, I was gonna put my entire, I was gonna put my entire life savings into this venture. 26:59 Yeah. So, um, yeah, it might not be a tear. Yeah, I do have some sitting on my fence row for what I need to pull out. I haven't got rid of the cultivator, Caleb, 27:07 for exactly what you're talking about. So unfortunately, um, but I think with the multitude of chemistries and other tools we have 27:16 and things we can do, you know, even after the season we do, it does sound like a big issue that how are we ever gonna deal with this? 27:24 But I think we have enough tools if you use enough of them to be able to handle the problem. 27:30 Got it. Now we're gonna go into strategies, which is the title of this episode. Strategies for Pigweed Control, em, it Increase Herbicide Resistance. 27:36 And this is something before we hit record, Caleb, keep me on the straight and narrow like he does said, Damien, let's make sure we spend a lot of time devoted. 27:43 'cause obviously in your job being an advisor to crop producers as you are, they turn to you and say, what do I do? So take me through a season and, 27:53 and if it's crop specific, that's fine. You just, you see a lot of, you see different crops in your job than, you know, 27:59 obviously Matt and I see there's no peanuts here or whatever. But take me through a season on how you would advise, uh, 28:06 me as a producer in your geography or even up here in our geography on control practices. 28:14 There is, we could talk an hour on it, but just to kind of hit the keynotes is when it comes to planting time, we want to start clean, stay clean. 28:24 So I would never recommend running a planter through a field where we have emerge weeds, 28:29 especially emerge pig weeds because it might cost us $10 to control 'em before they come up. 28:36 It's gonna cost us $20 to control 'em after they come up. So before the planner rolls to the field or directly behind the planner, 28:44 we wanna use multiple effective modes of action that provide us residual control. They're not gonna be a hundred percent effective, 28:52 they might only be 98% effective. So then we have that 2% that are still gonna come up in our crop. So then we want to hit it early post, emerge with, uh, 29:03 whatever our crop is, try to get multiple effective modes of action to kill the weeds that are up and also layer the residuals in, uh, at that application too. 29:15 Question for the person that is, you know, not as well-versed as you, those chemistries that you put on right before planting or right at time of 29:25 planting to handle that. And you said something that hills with residual. Give me a couple of examples. I mean, we don't use atrazine anymore, 29:32 so what are we using? So, uh, we do use atrazine here. And one thing that I will say too before I answer that question is there are herbicides that we can use both pre-emerge and post-em 29:47 emergence in crop, and then there are certain herbicides that we can only use before the crop emerges. 29:53 So when we're looking at which choices do I want to go out with before that crop is up, we have a lot wider selection of herbicides that we can use. 30:03 So I want to select those ones that we can't use after the crop comes up, right. So 30:09 Because the big Blair and Matt's big point was we should use every single thing because the more breadth of, uh, chemistries we used, 30:18 the more the less likelihood of creating herbicide resistance in the first place. 30:24 I'll, I'll give you an example. So with soybeans, a lot of people will use a group 15 herbicide, like dual outlooks, UA pre-emerge, uh, before the crop emerges. 30:35 But we can also use that after the crop emerges. So why would we wanna go ahead and use that up at the beginning of the year? Let's use chemistries like pr, valor, metri, buin, 30:47 those are some of the ones that I talk about in soybeans because we can't use any of those after the crop comes up. 30:54 But all three of them give us good control on pigweed and provide us that foundation. 31:00 So when we come back with our Post-em emergence herbicide application, we're not sitting in a sprayer and trying to find the rows of crop because we 31:08 have a carpet of pigweed, we just have a few here or there. So then that makes our subsequent applications more effective. 31:17 Okay. And then so that's, that's a very good point about pre pre-emerge and then post-em emerge. Uh, Matt, do you wanna kick in on anything to contribute to what, uh, 31:27 if you're taking me through the season, uh, add on to what, uh, Caleb said. 31:33 Yeah, so where we're at, we're, we have different weeds that, and Caleb I'm sure does too, but you know, our, 31:40 our weed management program really starts the year before, right at this time of the year. It's running our, you know, 31:46 our weeded wiper with Gramoxone to clean out anything we have left to knock everything down that we can get to. 31:51 Then we're gonna harvest the crop and try not to, if we have a patch of weeds, we're gonna cut around those and try not to spread that seed any further than 31:58 it's already been spread. Um, and then we're gonna come out with a fall burn down for stuff like, um, mares tail and things like that to make sure all that's clean before the year 32:09 even starts. So then you're at, you know, essentially you're at three, not passes, 32:14 but three things we've done so far and we haven't even got to Christmas yet, right, right. Next year. So then, like Caleb says, 32:20 we're gonna come back with a pre-emerge or a pre-plant, um, using a lot of thin chemistry he's talking about. And then we're gonna, 32:28 in our non G M O beans, we're talking about two to three passes of residual herbicide after the fact before we even get back to our weed wiper cycle on the soybeans. 32:38 So nothing different than what Caleb was talking about, just an expansion, you know, 32:43 when you have things like seed mills and stuff that are combine mounted that guys are going to now because of the pigweed and resistant rye grass and things 32:51 like that where you're actually destroying the seed that goes through the combine as well. 32:55 Okay. By the way, that's kind of, that's, that's along the lines of my thing. Are we talking about chemistries to sterilize the seed? 33:01 I didn't even know there was such a thing. Who wants to talk? Take that. Caleb, are you aware of these things? 33:04 Something on the combine device on the combine that then it destroys the seed. It doesn't eradicate the plant, 33:10 but it supposedly prevents replanting of these noxious wheats? I have heard of them. I have not seen one operate in the field, 33:19 but what Matt's talking about is something that is a really, really big deal for us in the south because we start corn harvest 33:29 in July, you know, finish up in August. Our first frost isn't till mid-November. So we've got a long amount of growing season left. 33:40 And typically as the corn's starting to dry down, you know, we don't have any more residual activity from our herbicides down south here by 33:47 the time the combine rolls through the field. So we've got pigweed that are two, three inches tall and three weeks after the combine rolls through the field, 33:55 we have a pigweed that's knee high with a seed head about 24 inches tall on it, producing viable seed. 34:01 So we can do a fantastic job in crop managing our pigweed. Yet sometimes when the combine rolls through the field, we just kind of put all the fields that we've harvested on the back burner and 34:15 they're just out of sight, out of mind now. So then we can actually go backwards in terms of our pigweed management. So we talk about things like tillage and then using herbicide 34:26 applications for our post harvest management of these resistant weeds so we can make sure that we have a zero tolerance 12 months outta the year. 34:35 Alright, so since you have that long fall, so to speak, is it gonna be chemistry or is it gonna be tillage? I mean, what, what, what are we doing there? Because you've got the longer fall before we even have, 34:46 uh, frost, Right? So de you know, depending on what you're going to go, uh, back with the following year, if it's corn behind corn, 34:56 I will like to run a tillage pass so we can start breaking down that residue right behind a combine. 35:01 If you are stretched for time and you wanna run something 120 foot wide, 12 mile an hour through the field, a herbicide, 35:10 a pass may work best in that scenario. Uh, but, but yeah, there's, there's several different things that we can't do. 35:18 Larry, Damian, to add to, to add to Caleb's point, and we, and he knows this, but just to, to talk to the viewers, you know, 35:24 we we're not just talking about crop areas too, you know, we need to be talking about turn rows and waterways and fence lines 35:31 and all these things where you can get viable seed in and they can grow, you know, controlling 'em in the field is one thing thing, 35:37 but with something like pigweed, you know, Well it, it used to be a thing to that point, Matt, that like Canadian thistle was the most noxious weeded, like county, 35:48 county agricultural boards had, uh, you know, policies. If you had two acres, the, uh, that you, you know, that was growing up in Canadian thistles, 35:57 like they could charge you to come out and, you know, eradicate it and that kind of thing. Is that where we're going? Since we're also talking about pipe wicks and moldboard plows, 36:06 bottom plows as they're called by our friend Blair. Well, a lot of those things are still in the books now, whether they're in force or not is, you know, that's gonna be area dependent. 36:15 But yeah, it, I mean, it, it can become a situation where that becomes necessary because, you know, when I was a kid, 36:20 we had an issue with a neighbor that when they were shelling corn, they would shoot all their weeded seeds across the road into one of our fields. 36:27 And it used to drive dad crazy with shatter cane at the time. And, uh, it, it's, that's, it's definitely on the table. And here's the thing. 36:36 Now, pretty much didn't you take care of that? Like he said, Matt, here's a baseball bat. 36:41 Make sure that their mailbox gets bat and you went and like, kind of took care of it, right? 36:45 No, I, we, he just very slowly that first couple passes, he would go out to every seat head of shatter cane and cut the seed head off and 36:52 bag it and burn it. And that's how we took care of it. Yeah. So, um, Blair, what are we missing here? But shatter cane, I've forgotten about that one. Johnson Grass was another, uh, 37:01 another nasty one back in the days. So anyway, maybe it's just the next thing. Shatter cane didn't take over the world. Kudzu kinda has, uh, 37:10 it, where are we? Canadian thistle doesn't seem to be as much of an issue anymore. Where are we, Blair? 37:16 Um, in terms of weeded control or the Journey with these weeds specifically, is it just the next thing like shatter cane, Johnson grass, 37:25 Canadian thistle and we'll get through it? Or is it more of a concern? Oh, I think it's a definite concern. 37:31 It's been going on for several years now and it's something I think we'll continue to manage for quite a while. Um, 37:38 in terms of pigweed and having to use all these, the key thing is using all these multiple tools, the toolbox, pulling out old strategies, thinking outside the box, um, to get through it. 37:50 I think What seems to me is it's more prolific than the other weeds. The other weeds were nasty and we didn't have a great answer, 37:58 but they weren't gonna, uh, you know, breed like flies, I think. Is that, Caleb, you kind of nodded your head. Is that where I am on this, 38:03 that the reason this one's this one's different is because it's, it's uh, it's prolific nature. 38:10 Yeah. And we look at where pigweed originated at the southwestern United States. 38:17 Not a whole lot of things are able to grow in those kinds of conditions. So they are, you know, when they came over here to begin with, 38:25 they had a leg up over pretty much anything that we're planting for annual crops just because how well they can tolerate those stressful conditions. 38:36 I, by the way, that is a brilliant, you know, one of my questions was gonna be where did this come from? So I appreciate you saying that you're talking about a family of weeds that can 38:44 e essentially exist where most things die or don't even sprout. Yeah, they, uh, it's commonly told in our area, you know, 38:52 if we could just graft a corn plant on top of a pigweed root stock, we could grow some, you know, 38:59 600 bushel corn pretty easily just with the amount of vigor that those plants have. 39:04 That's an awesome statement right there. All right, get me outta here, Blair, you got anything? And then we're gonna close up with Mr. 39:09 Swanson since he's the one that brought up this topic, uh, via, via uh, a text message last week. 39:16 I mean, I think the key thing, which Caleb and Matt both hit on is, you know, using those overlapping residuals, 39:22 being timely with your application and being willing to use some other maybe non-traditional methods, 39:29 even if it's hand weeding to stay on top of this weed. So it's really critical to stay up with all those different things and I think that's what it will take. 39:37 And so far we have been able to manage it here even though it's been a challenge and quite costly. 39:45 Got it. I think we're gonna leave it there. We're talking about strategies for pigweed control amid increase herb resistance. What do you got, Caleb? 39:51 Uh, just one other, a couple things that I wanted to go out the door with is, uh, if you're in an area that you can use cover crops, 39:58 there are cover crops like sero rye that have a lelo against pigweed species to where it can actually reduce the viability of the pigweed seed there in the soil. 40:11 And just whatever we can do to raise the best crop possible is gonna help us because crop canopy shading that ground out is the very best 40:21 weed controlled method that we have at our disposal. So all of, Since I was thinking about wrapping it up and I didn't get to the cover crop 40:28 thing, is this, okay, we've talked about a lot of things that are very anti cover crops, like moldboard plows and using cultivation in row, uh, like we did 40 years ago. 40:37 Now you're talking about cover crops. Is this the case for cover crops instead of moldboard plowing? It would, it would definitely be a another strategy. You know, they, they're, 40:47 they're kind of at a little bit off opposite ends of the spectrum. We wouldn't be using them both, but on crops like soybeans where they, 40:55 we can raise some fantastic soybeans, no tilled or minimal tilled into a, a cover crop to where we have a layer of biomass in the road 41:05 middles to where we're preventing the sunlight from hitting the ground earlier in the season. And then, you know, that helps us, 41:12 helps us stay clean until we close those rows up. Got it. All right, we're gonna leave it there. Anybody else? Blair? Matt, you wanna get me outta here then? Swanson? 41:22 Well, Damien, I mean here's what I would say. You asked if this was like a, a doomsday type situation. It's not current. Okay. And that's, you know, 41:30 we've got, if We want to get viewers, we need to be more crisis oriented. I mean, well I Mean this, this is a, we live 41:37 In the era of crisis, right? Yeah, no, this is a hundred percent a crisis that, that, that that is true. But what I would say, this is not a doomsday situation, 41:45 but because we still have options that work two 40 and dicamba still work in my area, but if we continue to treat them like we treat them, 41:53 they're not going to work. And eventually we're gonna run out Ship. Okay, well then, we'll, we'll close out with our girl. Blair. Blair, 41:59 is there chemistry in the pipeline that you're confident you work for F M C? Is there chemistry, not necessarily from your company? 42:06 Is there chemistry company that you're absolutely going, this isn't gonna be an issue one to three years from now? We got the industry. 42:12 Has this covered your thought? So I would never take that approach of we've got it covered. 'cause any herbicide resistance can be developed too. 42:20 But in response to your question of the pipeline, F M C actually does have some herbicides in development that are, you know, different modes that are excellent on pig week. So I, 42:32 I mean we're talking, you know, not in the next couple years, but you know, in the next five to 10 years, things like that. Um, 42:39 I am excited about what's in FMCs pipeline for Pig Week control. Her name is Blair Colvin. She's a technical search manager with fmc, 42:48 Caleb Trow our, uh, ex extreme ag affiliate, uh, and agronomic consultant down, uh, mostly in Georgia. You cover Florida too, right? 42:57 Correct. A little bit of Alabama, but mostly Georgia. Got it. Their money spends differently. Anyhow. I'd stick with Georgia, you know, Chad Henderson's over in Alabama. I mean, 43:05 it's just a different world over there, right? Uh, and our man, Matt Swanson who brought this topic to us, 43:11 I have a feeling where I'll cover this again because, uh, Caleb said he could spend an hour just on, uh, 43:16 just on going through the season on this thing and I don't think this problem's gonna go away. So stay tuned for more great coverage. Also, 43:22 if you know someone that's battling Pigweeds, share this with them. You know, there's hundreds and hundreds of videos on the Extreme Ag Farm website, 43:32 uh, podcasts that I've produced, videos of these guys in field videos of us talking to company people like Blair tos about what's coming in the pipeline. Go share this, watch this. It's free, 43:41 it's there. We want you to do this. It's all about helping you up your farm game. Till next time, thanks for being here, everybody. This extreme ags cutting the curve. 43:49 That's a wrap for this episode of Cutting the Curve, but there's plenty more. Check out Extreme ag.farm where you can find past episodes, 43:57 instructional videos and articles to help you squeeze more profit outta your farm. 44:04 Cutting the curve is brought to you by Advanced Drainage Systems, the leader in agriculture water management solutions.