
Overcoming Weeds And Protecting Yields
When it comes to weeds and yields, the relationship is a clear one. Blake Miller, an agronomy service representative with Syngenta, said weeds can greatly harm revenue potential, especially in corn.
“There's definitely a direct relationship there. We have looked at one to two-inch weeds and looked at their composition, and we can talk about how much nitrogen was in them, we know how much a weed that size will remove of water out of the field in three days, and other agronomic aspects, but where the rubber meets the road here, there's a Southern Illinois University study that effectively for every inch of weed growth you let compete with your corn, you're losing 4.6 bushels to the acre," Miller said. "Then a grower can take 4.6 times what they sold their crop for and they can start to dig into the economics of how I need to design my program, what's it costing me, and we know all those scientific attributes that I mentioned before, but that's the point that's really important.”
Miller added selecting your herbicide program requires looking at the big picture.
“What were those fields like the last time they were in corn? What did they look like last year? If you're rotating in a corn-soybean rotation, what was weed pressure like? Was the program effective the last time I used it? Does the program I'm using today have a long view? What does that mean? That means I want to manage my fields today like they have resistance so I don't get the resistance later on. Do I have multiple effective sites of action on my weed spectrum?”
Miller recommends herbicide for controlling weeds and boosting yields.
“The first herbicide that comes to mind is our Acuron brand. Acuron contains four active ingredients and three sites of action, so multiple effective sites of action on the field mitigate the development of resistance long-term. Acuron also is crop-safe. It's flexible in all types of cultural practices, it has good burndown activity if you're in a conservation program, and it also fits in a conventional tillage system very well. The thing with Acuron, outside of providing world-class herbicide control, we've also noticed in data from university and our own data that we’re outperforming our competitors. Because of the rates provided in this premix and the active ingredients, we’re outperforming products with Resicore by five to six bushels to the acre and TriVolt by 10 to 11 bushels to the acre. We have a theme internally. It's ‘Better Yield is a Better Deal’ because yield perpetuates the farm business, and it allows you the flexibility to do the right agronomic applications on your farm.”
Miller advised growers to talk to their local Syngenta retailer or sales rep to learn more or visit Syngenta's Website.
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