I would like to share something that may help our attitudes towards others crops. I had very uneven and varied emergence in all my crops, but especially the flax. My crops are a weedy mess. Here is why.
When you have half the field up and away, and the other half waiting for rain, and it does finally rain, it is a screwy issue to try to time spraying. On each field my preferred herbicide ended up being out of stage for either the first emerged or last. I was scared to harm one or the other. When you have flax six inches tall, and some starting to bloom, it is hard to time it. When some oats is late shot blade and some three leaf stage,, timing is really hard. I ended up using weak herbicides to keep the crop alive. The result is not good.
So before you go bashing guys for having weedy messes, take into account that they may have had an issue like this.
On the other note. I used to be a very high input farm. I was cutting edge where guys asked me to scout with them and I had top ten percent crops in the district.
And then the wet years came. Having little land equity started to show its ugly face. Final nail in the coffin was leaving 50 bushel canola and 65 bushel (measured by crop insurance) faba bean over winter in 2015.
When you have little to fall back on (paid for land), to pull you through times like that, a real long run of poor years topped off by unharvestable crop due to rain, it changes perspectives
I am now a more middle ground input guy. Far too risky now. The other thing is inputs are so ridiculous expensive now compared to when I started farming in the 90’s, so over time it gets hard to justify high inputs.
Had things clicked, had I harvested that canola and faba, I would have probably still been a high inputter!
When you have half the field up and away, and the other half waiting for rain, and it does finally rain, it is a screwy issue to try to time spraying. On each field my preferred herbicide ended up being out of stage for either the first emerged or last. I was scared to harm one or the other. When you have flax six inches tall, and some starting to bloom, it is hard to time it. When some oats is late shot blade and some three leaf stage,, timing is really hard. I ended up using weak herbicides to keep the crop alive. The result is not good.
So before you go bashing guys for having weedy messes, take into account that they may have had an issue like this.
On the other note. I used to be a very high input farm. I was cutting edge where guys asked me to scout with them and I had top ten percent crops in the district.
And then the wet years came. Having little land equity started to show its ugly face. Final nail in the coffin was leaving 50 bushel canola and 65 bushel (measured by crop insurance) faba bean over winter in 2015.
When you have little to fall back on (paid for land), to pull you through times like that, a real long run of poor years topped off by unharvestable crop due to rain, it changes perspectives
I am now a more middle ground input guy. Far too risky now. The other thing is inputs are so ridiculous expensive now compared to when I started farming in the 90’s, so over time it gets hard to justify high inputs.
Had things clicked, had I harvested that canola and faba, I would have probably still been a high inputter!
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