Crop disease ... Getting outa hand ?

[hobbyfrmr]

I think conventional farmers are not spraying enough. They pay for the best genetics, buy the most fertilizer possible to feed the plant , buy a $200-400,000 sprayerand then Try to get away with as few passes as possible. If the herbicide didnt work, spray it again, if the fungicide didnt work, spray it again. Run that sprayer hard, it is the most important tool on the farm to protect your investment , its not a ****ing lawn ornament.

[farmaholic]

hobby..... sarcastically priceless!

[fjlip]

And NOTHING depreciates FASTER than HC sprayers, high cost per acre/hour. No thanks...

[jwab]

But but my neighbors are all doing it.

[tweety]

Stop spraying fungicides. Oh sure, i can hear you laugh. But you're killing all the fungus in the soil - and left with the most durable bad ass fungus with no competition - and it thrives. Is it that simple, yup. But you sure don't want to hear that now do you.

Spray more! Spray again! Spray often. Its like a cocaine addiction.

[hobbyfrmr]

hobby..... sarcastically priceless!

Its only half sarcastic. My area is big farms and their sprayers might stop for 10 days in the growing season. Im sure some of that is top dressing or micronutrients or fungicides etc but they get exceptional crops. They have planes, helicopters,ground units, the employees wives out there with backpacks (joke), and they are generating wealth untold. It is actually very impressive. Salaries for all the local and import employees. They are making money and buying up all the farmland and houses (assets) possible= wealth building. When they wind down operations they will own multi millions of dollars of farmland.

[farmaholic]

Herbicide spraying never kills ALL the weeds
Insecticide spraying never kills ALL the bugs
Fungicide spraying will never kill ALL the fungi

Do I like spraying? No
Do we have to spray? No, not ALL the time.

By the way that damn fungicide only ever claims "suppression".
2015...I never used a drop.
This year...different story.

Quit beating us with the fusarium and vomitoxin stick and maybe we won't "think" we have to spray. Damned if you do-- damned if you don't. ..no win.

When year after year you put out the smorgasbord. ...what do you expect? Continuous cropping and wetter than normal conditions? Was summerfallow sustainable? Can you imagine the amount of water transpired from a thick lush canopy and add rain on top of that...humid much?

[MBgrower]

I agree with tweety. Also min or zero till in sk, and low disturbance seeding not drying out the ground or turning over the fungal resting bodies. In mb we till, till, till. Go black or go home!

[farmaholic]

Almost need to be a contortionist and billionaire to adapt to the ever changing conditions. Summerfallow/tillage badly degraded our soils here...now to combat disease we're to work or burn it black? I believe tillage would reduce disease but not eliminate it. When that hot ****ing wind blows with humity in the low twenties or high teens the last thing I want to do is have tilled soil with no trash cover! We dried out to the point this spring we actually stopped seeding for two and a half days.

Maybe the answer isn't tillage or fungicides but resistance bred into the cultivars. Actually some varieties are more tolerant than others today!

[tubs]

I believe we are applying to much nitrogen and we get unbalanced plant which make them susceptiple to fungus attacks