By Virgil Schmitt
More than 150 farmers and agribusiness professionals took part in Weeds Week events around the state this summer. The 2016 Weeds Week, held July 18-22, was the second year Iowa State University Extension and Outreach has offered the event. The program held at five locations across the state included presentations by ISU Extension and Outreach specialists on weed identification, evaluating herbicide sites of action, and developing long-term, field-specific weed management plans as well as field plot tours. This year’s program included an additional component to help farmers evaluate and plan for successful weed control.
“This year we took people through the actual process of designing effective weed management programs and provided participants the time to develop their own strategy around their weeds of concern,” said Virgil Schmitt, field agronomist at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.
Morgan and Evan McCarty are brothers who’ve attended a Weeds Week program over the past two years. They farm with their father in Royal, Iowa, and do all of the spraying applications to their corn and soybean fields. Morgan and Evan decided to attend Weeds Week to learn more about using multiple sites of action and scouting.
“We realized that Roundup isn’t the cure, and wanted to learn about different herbicide programs,” said Evan.
At the 2015 and 2016 Weeds Week programs, Evan and Morgan learned about planning two to three years in advance to hit different herbicide groups, and not to use the same family of herbicides every year. Evan said they were also told about the economic impact of ignoring resistance and not managing weeds early on.
“Two years in a row, we heard that you should spend more money on weed control early on to avoid additional costs later, but we didn’t act on it,” said Evan. "After Weeds Week last year, we decided to take their advice, and we took action earlier in the season to avoid late-season consequences.”
Morgan says the changes have paid off, and they are seeing good weed control this year.
“We are seeing good results from the management changes we made over the past year,” said Morgan. “We’ve had a couple issues with giant ragweed and waterhemp, but besides that, our fields look really clean.”
The program also allowed farmers and agribusiness professionals to discuss their specific weed problems with one another and gave them the opportunity to have ISU Extension and Outreach specialists answer their questions.
“We provided opportunities for participants to identify factors that would influence the effectiveness of a herbicide program, whether or not a single application would be effective, and non-chemical techniques that impact weed management,” said Schmitt. “We then used their answers as the jumping-off point to address some of those issues. People learned from each other, as well as from ISU Extension and Outreach staff.”