During a Telus crop protection webinar in June, participants were asked whether they had ever had an incident of spraying the wrong field or the wrong product. Fifty-three per cent answered yes.

“As unfortunate as it may be, spraying errors do occasionally happen,” says Charlie Muller, vice-president of the Manitoba Aerial Applicators Association. “You can sit in your office all winter long and dream up the perfect execution plan to never make a mistake. You can do all the training and studying in the world to be considered an expert and think you’re ready to take on the world. But when the season hits and you’re working 18-hour days, lucky to get five hours of sleep per night for weeks at a time, fatigue sets in and one simple little mistake is all it can take to cause a misapplication.”

Muller notes that the ag industry doesn’t work on a 40-hour work week like most other industries, and that 80- to 100-hour weeks are common for a good half of every year. “And with that, we have to expect fatigue to be an issue,” he says. “Finding ways to get your employees well rested during a busy time can be difficult, but necessary to avoid mistakes.”

Mistakes might stem from an error a farmer makes while filling out paperwork or a judgment call on weather conditions by a spray operator that turns out to be wrong. “It takes a whole team of people to get the work done properly,” says Muller, “and everyone has their own responsibilities to ensure it gets done right.”

In aerial applications, errors can stem from ground personnel giving the wrong legal land description to the pilot, and they are often associated with poor communication with the grower. “You’d be surprised how often a hand-drawn map on a coffee-stained napkin is used to explain where a field is,” Muller says.

Many sources of error

As well as mixing up a field’s location, there are many other sources of error, says Mitch Rezansoff, executive director of the Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers (CAAR). These include poor equipment calibration, worn components, rapid weather changes, unknown or non-visible plant stresses, tank contamination, unregistered use patterns and narrow application windows.

From what Mark Luymes and Todd Frey have seen over their careers, mistakes are most likely to be a miscommunication about crop traits. Luymes is president and Frey is vice-president of the Ontario Professional Agri-Contractors Association (OPACA). Luymes is a partner at Luymes Custom Farming and Frey is a second-generation owner-operator at Clean Field Services. 

They explain, for example, that because GM and non-GM corn look the same, there are many programs that have a colour-coded system that alert an operator to exactly the crop type in the field. 

“In Ontario, there is training and licensing for operators that we are required to have. Part of that requires proper rinsing procedures between products to eliminate the risk of farming the next field with the wrong product,” Frey says.

He recommends that farmers sit down with their custom applicator to communicate the crop plan and make sure everyone, including the agronomist and seed dealer, is on the same page. 

“Write crop plans down and make a contingency plan if you might switch the crop. Let the custom applicator know the moment a crop plan changes.”

And double-check

Luymes advises that both the operator and the farmer double-check everything. 

“Double-check the right seed bags were planted (the labels can be tricky), double-check the right chemical is in the tank and double-check you’re in the right field,” he says. “More and more fields (even without) houses have fire numbers with the road name as well, so this is helping contractors and their employees better know the fields.” 

“We take the approach not to assume anything,” adds a custom-spraying CAAR member in Alberta who does not wish to be named. 

“Always ask questions and confirm fields and what was seeded. Have applicator meetings to discuss proper applicating for different chemistry. Visually confirm the map and crop with the producer, in person or (by) text. Have two people review the spray sheets before it goes out to the field.” 

He also suggests applicators call producers upon field entry to confirm field locations, using specific landmarks. He also advises his peers not to rush the paperwork. An extra 10 minutes can make all the difference. 

Use technology

Muller notes that in the aerial industry, a pilot will have a digital map filled out with all the surrounding crops and necessary information to properly locate the field and any obstacles that may affect the flight pattern. 

“The legal land locations are also entered into their GPS systems which will guide them all the way to the field, and so as long as the information provided to the pilot is right, it’s rare for an aircraft to spray the wrong field,” Muller says. “So, adapting to modern technology is really narrowing down many of the common mistakes made in the past.” 

He adds that with advances in field data and mapping technologies, some sprayers will not work outside of the field boundaries they are set to spray, eliminating any possibility of non-target application. 

Muller says smartphone apps can also help. 

“Most people in the ag industry work with legal land locations, so there are apps available, like Prairie Locator, that will direct you to the exact co-ordinates a sprayer driver or pilot needs. With today’s smartphones combined with satellite imagery, it isn’t difficult to position yourself on the field you’re supposed to spray.” 

But Frey says he and his colleagues are also of the view that technology doesn’t eliminate the need for double-checking. “Sometimes GPS doesn’t cut it, so be sure by staking the field with high visibility posts. Sometimes farmers plant two different traits in the same field, sometimes it’s sweet corn on the last few rows. If this is the case, the boundaries need to be clearly marked.”

Meet you at joking. upstage. attached

Another tool for identifying precise location is what3words, a smartphone app that divides the entire Earth’s surface into three-metre squares and identifies each with three distinct words.

Supposing you’re at the Discovery Farm in Langham, Sask., and want to give directions to someone so they can meet you at a particular crop plot. You check your smartphone, which tells you you’re at “joking.upstage.attached.” You can then send the location to the other person, who can navigate to the spot using Google Maps or Apple Maps.

The tool uses a smartphone’s GPS receiver, so in areas with no phone signal, it can still find the user’s location. The app can also be used for other purposes such as emergency calls or vet calls.

More information is available at what3words.com.

The post Whoops… wrong field appeared first on Country Guide.

Well, you’re not alone. “There have been a lot more questions about fungicide resistance in the last two years than in the last 10,” says Troy Basaraba, a market development representative with Bayer in Brandon, Man.

There is a buzz of concern about fungicide resistance, but Mike Harding says the good news is that if you’re already employing best management practices to control herbicide resistance, you’re likely keeping fungicide resistance in check.

“The same principles and strategies that work for herbicide resistance will work for fungicide resistance,” says Harding, a research scientist in plant health with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry in Brooks, Alta. “Crop rotation is a really key piece, also good control of volunteers and weeds that might be hosts, and hopefully the message is getting out there that you shouldn’t apply half rates of fungicides and multiple applications of a single mode of action.”

If that sounds too simple and you’re waiting for a “but” here it is: if you don’t pay attention to managing for fungicide resistance now while the incidence is relatively low, we are laying the groundwork for worsening problems in the future. “No one wants to get into the situation we are with weed resistance,” says Basaraba. “It’s good to think about it, but let’s have this conversation now about pathogens and levels of risk.”

The mechanics of fungicide resistance

How does fungicide resistance develop? As with resistant weeds, a naturally occurring mutation allows a particular fungal strain (or isolate) to lose sensitivity to a fungicide, and this mutation is passed on to future generations.

If you think of it as bell curve, says Harding, most strains of a given disease are safely in the middle. “As you go to the highly resistant end of the curve, the number of individuals will drop off. So if you have one individual in a million that’s resistant but you keep applying the same fungicide to it, over time it becomes the most common strain. We’re just selecting for that oddball genotype.”

What makes this process a bit different from herbicide resistance is that when resistant weeds reproduce, their seeds can hang around for a long time. When fungi reproduce, their offspring often don’t survive long without our help.

“There’s a reason these resistant isolates are rare and it’s a fitness cost,” says Harding, explaining the mutation that allows a disease strain to survive a fungicide may come at the expense of other survival mechanisms. “Once you remove the selection pressure, they don’t survive as well in the environment.”

Which brings us to another difference between herbicide and fungicide resistance: the presence of a host. “With some fungal pathogens, if they don’t have a host they can’t complete their lifecycle,” says Harding, cautioning that this is not true of all diseases. Sclerotinia, for example, produces fungal storage bodies that survive very well in the soil for a long time.

As a general rule though, if there is no host tissue for a resistant fungal pathogen to grow on, it doesn’t survive long in the environment. Resistant weeds have no such requirement — the environment is their host.

“The bad news is there are a lot of fungi that have the ability to create diversity through sexual regeneration and form a ton of clones through asexual regeneration,” Harding says. “The good news is we’re the ones supplying the selection pressure so we have the opportunity to change that.”

The importance of understanding different risks

Basaraba says it’s important for farmers to understand the risk levels associated with their fungicide tools, the diseases themselves and their farming practices.

“You need three worlds to crash together to get fungicide resistance,” he says. “Number one is the fungicide and mode of action (MoA). Some MoAs are more prone to resistance developing, like strobilurins. They’re high risk versus triazoles, which are medium risk.”

“Number two is the disease pathogen itself,” Basaraba says, explaining that some diseases are more prone to developing resistance than others, depending on lifecycle. “Fusarium or sclerotinia are low-risk pathogens because they have only one cycle per year. Ascochyta is polycyclic, so it’s high risk.

“Number three is agronomic risk,” Basaraba says. “What are we doing as farmers to accelerate or decelerate development of resistance? Rotations, for example, or how many times do we apply a fungicide to a crop?” Getting disease under control in pulse crops sometimes takes multiple fungicide applications — a higher-risk agronomic strategy — whereas only one application is used to manage fusarium head blight in wheat, a lower-risk strategy.

While it’s good to know and understand the risk levels associated with disease, fungicide actives and agronomic practice, both Basaraba and Harding stress that low or medium risk doesn’t mean zero risk and vigilance is key.

As Harding points out, growing a crop is a complex biological process involving a lot of other factors that can have an effect on disease expression, the development of fungicide resistance and disease control, including the presence of weeds and volunteers, moisture levels, rainfall, temperature, wind… the list goes on.

Basaraba says that even things like premixed or mixable fungicide products can add to the complexity that farmers need to think about. “Farmers automatically think more MoAs is better for fungicide resistance management,” he says. “I think wait a minute! Some of these multi-mode products aren’t full dose rates.”

Echoing that point, Harding recalls the trend of using split-rate applications to control some diseases, like fungal leaf spots in wheat. The idea was to get some control of leaf disease lower on the plant, then go back in later to protect the flag and head. “It’s not a good practice because you’re applying a non-lethal dose both times,” he says. “Hopefully the message is getting out there that you shouldn’t apply half rates.”

“You have to go back to the basics when it comes to fungicide resistance management,” Basaraba says — good crop rotations, understand fungicide MoAs, timely and proper fungicide application, use full rates, don’t over-apply higher risk MoAs, scout and keep good records.

The power of a test strip

Excellent disease control does not necessarily mean a completely disease-free field. Many highly effective fungicides offer suppression only, so how do you know if your fungicide is working properly or if you have a resistance problem?

The only way to know that for sure is to keep an untreated check in the field you’re worried about. And if that idea throws you into a panic, Basaraba and Harding have some wise, calming words.

“Most diseases stay pretty local,” says Harding, adding that most diseases don’t travel more than 100 metres from their origin point. “The exceptions are things like rust in cereals and late blight in potatoes, which can travel far on the wind. But something like sclerotinia, for example, stays local to the field it’s in and, once bloom period is done, infection isn’t going to get any worse.”

As a government researcher, Harding has been involved in dozens of fungicide trials with untreated check strips and says the fear of catastrophic disease spread from them is truly unwarranted. “If you’re uncomfortable with the risk then fine, don’t do it,” he says. “But — how are you going to know if your fungicide actually performed? It’s a balancing act between risk aversion and wanting to know if your fungicide performed. If that information is valuable to you, then have a test strip.”

Basaraba agrees. “An untreated check is the only way you can benchmark what your fungicide is doing for you.”

He also advises farmers to make diligent efforts to measure the differences between the check and the rest of the field. Don’t just look at it, he says. “Take measurements to find out if it’s working or not,” he says, adding that digital farming tools, such as Climate FieldView, can be excellent helpmates in this area. “We’ve helped farmers to do untreated strips and some of them will do a walk-through to check visual differences. But when you can capture that comparison through digital imagery or harvest comparison, you can understand treated and untreated differences much better.

“And if the fungicide is not working then you have to find out why — start checking things off the list and don’t just automatically jump to product failure.” That list includes things like application timing, technique and dose rate, whether the spray equipment was adequate to the task, what the spray conditions were, crop susceptibility to disease, rotations and more.

“When we follow the principles of good crop management, we really do have the power to stay ahead of fungicide resistance,” Harding says. “But if we ignore it, fungi really do have the capacity to adapt.”

“Have an understanding of what it is and have some good conversations,” Basaraba says. “Make rational, knowledgeable agronomic decisions.”

This article was originally published in the 2020 Disease & Yield Management Guide, a Country Guide Special supplement sponsored by Bayer Crop Science.

The post Stay calm and spray on appeared first on Country Guide.

Often referred to as the “spray to swath” interval, the PHI is the number of days that must pass between spraying pesticides or desiccants and swathing/straight cutting.

The PHI can vary greatly between products — from one day to more than 60 days — so it’s important that producers know and adhere to the prescribed interval for each product applied to a crop. This ensures the product’s active ingredient has had enough time to break down in the plant.

Growers can plan their pre-harvest spraying with an interactive Spray to Swath Interval Calculator.

To calculate how long to wait after spraying before heading out to swath or straight cut, select crop type and then the product (from the pull-down menu). Along with the minimum number of days before a crop can be cut, the online tool provides relevant information or warnings, if applicable.

The tool can also be used to select a product to fit a specific timeline. It is also mobile friendly.

The post Avoiding chemical residues now just two clicks away appeared first on Country Guide.

“I can’t tell you how often I hear, ‘Oh, it’s just a fungicide, fog it in,” said Jason Deveau, the fondly nicknamed “spray guy” from Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and developer of Sprayers 101, a blog aimed at best spray practices and innovations. “Pesticide drift is pesticide drift, whether it has instant visual damage or economic damage, or not.”

It’s a perspective that Justine Cornelsen of the Canola Council of Canada agrees with, although she says the implications for neighbouring crops are generally not as severe when applying fungicide or an insecticide.

“With insecticide drift, you’re worried about wiping out your headlands,” she said. “That’s where all the beneficial insects, your pollinators are hanging out.”

Fungicide may come with fewer overt impacts, she added, although she noted that the active ingredients in an insecticide or a fungicide might not be registered for other crops.

Avoiding drift

Wind may not be the villain farmers assume, Deveau said.

“A lot of growers are now moving towards nozzles that produce a ‘coarse’ or larger spray quality,” he said, although he noted that even a sprayer calibrated for large droplets will create some fine particles more likely to blow.

When combined with a lower boom and slower speed, the spray expert argues that farmers can comfortably spray in “moderate” wind.

There’s no set number to go with that recommendation, he said, although 10-15 kilometres an hour is “not unreasonable,” as long as the farmer’s mental calculation includes what is vulnerable downwind.

In fact, he argued, a moderately windy day is far better than early morning or evening calm when inversion risk is up and stagnant air means fine spray may not disperse.

“As you drive back and forth and back and forth, you can’t see it, but you’re leaving a fog all around the sprayer that you’ve been driving back and forth and it just hangs there. And the reason inversions are so brutal is because they’re unpredictable. Once they burn off and a light wind starts up, we don’t know where it’s going to go,” he said.

How windy is too windy?

Farmers may want to look past the Beaufort scale when measuring wind, Deveau said. Instead, he urges, “common-sense” thinking that takes into account wind direction, travel direction, and wind measured at boom height in the farmer’s field.

“Recognize that if that says 15 kilometres an hour and you’re driving 15 kilometres an hour into that wind, you now have 30 kilometres an hour,” he cautioned.

“When the grower has to make the call and they go, ‘I’ve been rained out and we’ve got to get it on and integrated pest management tells me now is the time to go, but it’s 12 kilometres an hour and I’m occasionally driving into it, what do I do?’ maybe that’s when you make the changes,” he said. “Well, I guess I’ll slow down a little. I guess I’ll drop my boom a bit. Maybe I should go to the coarser droplet and that means carrying a bit more volume. You can make those changes to your program to compensate for weather that’s on the edge.”

New measure

Tom Wolf, president of Saskatoon spray company Agrimetrix, recently took a hard look at Delta T, an Australian concept that uses temperature and relative humidity to gauge evaporation, and therefore, drift risk.

Knowledge from Down Under warns that evaporation will be too high if Delta T tops eight or 10, while spray that does make it to target will dry quicker and be less effective. Too low (below two), and small drift-friendly droplets will not evaporate, also raising drift concern, he wrote on a recent post on Sprayers 101.

The addition of Delta T has been useful in North America, Wolf said, although he cautioned against using that measure alone.

“Over the past 10 to 20 years, we’ve observed greater use of low-drift sprays, with the coarser sprays’ larger droplets resisting fast evaporation,” he said. “In the past five to 10 years, water volumes have increased due to our heavier reliance on fungicides, desiccants, and contact modes of action. Both of these developments have helped reduce the impact of a dry atmosphere. We simply can’t say if a Delta T of 10 is too high with these new application methods.”

Wolf advised farmers to watch Delta T over time with the same product, and add that experience into their decision.

For his part, Deveau repeated his advice on common sense.

“If it is hot and dry, then yeah, your spray is going to be much smaller when it gets to the target, if it gets there at all,” he said. “If you add hot, dry and windy, pack it in.”

This article originally appeared in the July 16, 2018 issue of the Manitoba Co-operator.

The post ‘Spray Guy’ puts the nix on ‘cavalier’ fungicide application appeared first on Country Guide.

But now we need to ask: Is “recreational spraying” joining “recreational tillage?”

Without question, farmers are spending a lot more time spraying pesticides, with many of us making multiple passes a year over every field. But are all those sprayer hours and investments in pesticides justifiable?

This is a critical question given the increasing demand by consumers for reductions in pesticides in both their foods and the environment. Consumers are worried when they see reports of pesticide residues in their food and even water. In France in 2013, the General Directorate of Health reported seven per cent of French citizens “had been supplied, at least once, with drinking water that was over the maximum authorized pesticide concentration.”

Because of consumer pressure, France has adopted the ECOPHYTO national action plan which calls for a 50 per cent decrease in pesticide use by 2025. (Initially, the target date for this reduction was 2018.)

To find out what impact this ruling may have on agricultural production, a group of agronomists in France tackled the question of pesticide overuse, and they have now released their eye-opening findings in the paper “Reducing pesticide use while preserving crop productivity and profitability on arable farms” published in the journal Nature Plants in March of this year.

Specifically, they wanted to find out whether substantial reductions in pesticide use are possible without having an impact on crop productivity and profitability.

The five scientists on the team analyzed pesticide usage, the productivity and the profitability of 946 conventional farms across the country. All farms in the study were non-organic and applied pesticides and fertilizers, although pesticide usage varied widely between farms.

The scientists also compared the actual usage of herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and other products including growth regulators and rodenticides against the recommended application rates of these products for the specific crop rotation system used on each farm.

The researchers found that only 59 farms (just six per cent of the farms in the study) would likely experience a decline in productivity if pesticide usage decreased.

They also found, where there were productivity losses, it was almost always because of herbicides. Reducing fungicides or insecticides had little impact on productivity except on intensively farmed crops like potatoes and sugar beets.

Even so, 55 per cent of the farms could cut back herbicide usage with little impact on productivity.

More importantly, 39 per cent of farms would actually be more productive if they reduced their pesticide usage. (These farms were often livestock producers applying large amounts of pesticides to crops like corn that are grown for feed.)

The cost of pesticide overuse becomes even clearer when the scientists looked at farm profitability. The paper states: “We found that pesticide use could be reduced without a significant impact on profitability in 67 per cent of the surveyed farms.”

As well, in 11 per cent of the farms, pesticide use reduction could even significantly increase profitability.

The conclusion of this study was: “Our results suggest that pesticide use could be substantially reduced without any financial cost, but also without any financial interest, for most of the French arable farmers.”

However, this does not mean it would be cost-free. The study found that to achieve this pesticide reduction would require changes in “crop rotation, soil tillage practices, cultivars, sowing dates and density, fertilizer, and so on.”

Switching to non-chemical control of weeds increases the risk of production losses, they found, whereas introducing non-chemical control of disease tends to increase productivity but decrease profitability.

Insecticide usage and its impact on productivity and profitability correlated closely with oilseed rape in the crop rotation. Reducing the frequency of oilseed rape had lower insecticide costs and higher productivity and profitability.

The bottom line is that reducing pesticides increases the complexity of decision-making and management on the farm.

In others words, it requires more and better management, and it requires changing away from current farm management practices. Plus, it reintroduces risks that modern conventional farming systems, with their use of chemical controls, had largely mitigated.

Such a change would not be easy for risk-averse farmers.

North American status

Many will argue that this study has little relevance in North America since we don’t use nearly as much pesticide as is applied in Europe. There are two problems with this argument.

First, zero tillage, technological advances in sprayers, and rapid adoption of fungicides and other new pesticide products (including organic and biological products) are driving a rapid increase in pesticide use in North America. Second, consumer rejection of pesticides is global, and a push to reduce pesticide usage in Europe will prompt calls for reductions elsewhere, including Canada.

In 2012, Diana Yates at the University of Illinois reported in the Western Farm Press that Michael Gray, a crop scientist at Illinois, had surveyed 2011 corn and soybean fields for pests in 47 counties in the state and found key insect pests to be at or near zero in many counties. In Yates’s report Gray stated: “I’ve never seen anything like it in 22 years of doing this kind of research. From an insect diversity perspective, it’s a biological desert in many of those fields.”

Instead of using integrated pest management practices, Gray found growers rely on multiple chemical applications. Farmers tended to throw everything in their arsenal at pests in an attempt to achieve total pest control each and every year.

Instead of an integrated pest management program, Illinois farmers have adopted what Gray called an insurance pest management program. According to Gray, risk-averse Illinois corn growers saw investing $20 or $25 per acre in an additional pesticide application as cheap insurance when they have already invested an average $850 an acre in fertilizer, seed, crop insurance, machinery, and land rent (or ownership) costs for their corn crop.

This “insurance” attitude is further entrenched by farm lenders, agronomists, and advisers all pushing farmers to maximize yields, abetted by constant pressure from retailers and chemical manufacturers to use more pesticides.

Make no mistake. I’m not endorsing or arguing for organic production. Numerous studies have shown lower productivity with organic production. Most suggest productivity falls in the range of 19 to 25 per cent, according to a recent UBC paper by Verena Seufert and Navin Ramankutty. These University of British Columbia researchers have compared the results of a large number of organic and conventional research studies. Rather, the French study and Gray’s work simply encourage farmers to restrict the use of pesticides to when they are truly needed.

As a farmer, are you ensuring the need of the pesticide before application? Do you actually scout your fields to determine if and what pest infestation is present before spraying? Do you select the pesticide you are applying for the actual pests present, or do you use a broad-spectrum product to get whatever might be out there?

Do you know the threshold infestation level of a pest that makes control economical, or do you simply spray if the neighbours spray for the pest? Do you leave a control or untreated check in the field for each pesticide you apply to see the effect of not spraying? If not, how do you know if the investment you made in the pesticide was economical?

Overuse of pesticides not only increases cost of production but also increases the risk of resistance issues, and it increases the distrust by the consumer of the safety of the food we produce. It can even shut North American farmers out of important export markets for our production.

Farmers love to complain about the cost of pesticides and the time they now spend in the sprayer. But are all those products and hours really needed? Only each individual farmer can answer that question for their own farm. But unfortunately, it is a question many farmers are not even asking themselves.

Unless farmers minimize the use of pesticides to the level at which consumers see that the increased production and lower food costs that are made possible with pesticides outweigh the negatives of pesticide usage (including food security and higher prices), governments and society will force the change on us through legislation such as France has already adopted.

On a final note, farmers alone cannot and should not be expected to reduce pesticide use. For a reduction to occur we are going to need investments by government and industry for the development of more pest-resistant crops and alternative cropping systems.

Consumers, too, are going to have to be better educated on the importance of pesticides if productivity is to be maintained and a growing world population is to be fed.

The post ‘Insurance’ spraying appeared first on Country Guide.

The buzz around the launch of Xtend soybeans in 2017 is creating a new level of scrutiny on spray applications. Like it or not, consumers and governments are watching, and increased diligence is warranted.

Re-enter the InterLock system. First launched more than 10 years ago in the U.S., it was introduced in Canada around 2008, but its growth at that time was limited for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s an adjuvant, which means it doesn’t share the same demand here in Canada. The adjuvant market in the U.S. is much more robust, while north of the border adjuvants are often mistaken for surfactants.

Dave Van Dam is the director of proprietary pesticides for WinField United in the U.S., but has the perspective that comes from attending the universities of Guelph and Manitoba. He manages the adjuvant portfolio for WinField United in Canada, and is well aware of the differences between the U.S. and Canadian reliance on adjuvants and other agents.

“We would define the adjuvant market with various subgroups, where you have surfactants that help a product stick and spread on the leaf surface,” says Van Dam. “Then you would also have a class of water conditioners, with ammonium sulphate-based products making up the largest number of those, and they prevent the water from tying up the active ingredient.”

Then there are other products like oils that can act as a type of surfactant yet they can also act as a delivery system. Many of the grass herbicides need an oil-based product to get through the waxy layer on a weed leaf’s surface. Oils can be labelled as a surfactant or occupy a group on their own. There are also acidifiers, which alter the pH in a solution and can help the product work in its own particular environment.

Where the InterLock system fits into these classifications is as a drift control/deposition agent. It’s an oil-derived adjuvant that forms droplets coming out of the nozzles at the optimum size so they’ll be less likely to drift or move off-target.

This produces a more uniform droplet pattern that helps droplets to move through the canopy for greater penetration and coverage.

Confusion

Part of the confusion with the terms comes from the levels of regulation. Van Dam notes that in the U.S., adjuvants are not regulated by the EPA. As long as the adjuvant does not contain any active ingredient and all of the inert ingredients that are in the adjuvant are registered as inert and without any adverse effects to human health or the environment, then it is not regulated.

In Canada, the regulations governing the use of adjuvants are stricter. Here, adjuvants are divided into two classes: activators and utility modifiers. Water conditioners and drift-control products fall under the utility modifiers heading, and as such do not require efficacy data for registration by the Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA). An activator, on the other hand, includes chemical compounds that are intended to improve efficacy or enhance biological performance of a product by modifying or enhancing its physical or chemical characteristics, and they are subject to Pest Control Products Act regulations.

“That’s why we call the InterLock system an adjuvant,” says Van Dam. “It’s a drift and deposition adjuvant. The use rate for it is two to four fluid ounces (59 to 118 millilitres) per acre, which is very minimal compared to when you hear ‘crop oil concentrates,’ which are much higher.”

Aside from differences in regulations and specific terminology, marketing is another factor that has affected uptake in Canada versus the U.S. Sales of the InterLock system in the U.S. during the past 10 years have been steady and considerable, to the point that by 2015, it was being used on 67 million acres, the second-most utilized product next to Monsanto’s PowerMax.

In Canada, meanwhile, InterLock has been involved in a number of mergers and acquisitions, which has reduced its market focus.

“Now that we’ve established ourselves in the U.S., we’re looking for international growth opportunities,” says Van Dam. “The merger with United Suppliers brings with it the United Suppliers Canada group in Western Canada, and we’re working more closely with the AgroMart Group in Ontario and La Co-op Fédérée in Quebec.”

The climate has also changed with the arrival of XtendiMax and Engenia, and at a later date, Enlist. Those are driving concerns about drift and off-target movement of dicamba and 2,4-D (with the Enlist system).

“Right now we’re getting a lot more focus and a lot more questions about off-target movement and how to prevent that,” adds Van Dam. “You’re hearing a lot more about nozzle selections as well as drift control agents that can be added to the tanks to help prevent that. Some of it is government regulatory, some of it is consumer awareness (and the bee and neonic issue in particular), and frankly some of it is within the agricultural environment itself, where neighbours are frustrated with damaged crops.”

Van Dam agrees that much depends on selecting the right nozzle with the right active ingredient and right adjuvant, and all under the right field conditions. WinField United has relied on specialists such as Dr. Tom Wolf of Agrimetrix Research and Training, and Jason Deveau of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) for their insights on the matter.

“We do a lot of spray table demonstrations,” says Van Dam. “That’s to show the total spray application solution and it’s the right nozzle with the right adjuvant in that combination.”

Here at home

In 2008, Lakeside Grain and Feed Limited in Forest, Ont., held a field demonstration to showcase the InterLock’s capabilities. Wind speeds were monitored, water-sensitive papers were laid out and the product was widely touted as a success in reducing off-target movement. And then, as Van Dam describes it, the system went largely unnoticed in Canada.

Yet according to Duane Winter, a sprayer operator and certified crop adviser (CCA) with Lakeside, there are at least a dozen InterLock users that he works with, and they use the system when the circumstances require it.

“It helps reduce off-target or bad experiences,” says Winter. “You don’t always need it… but it’s one more tool that we have to reduce the possibility of off-target damage.”

Winter echoes Van Dam’s observation that the climate surrounding off-target movement has certainly changed. “As our society seems to evolve from a liability standpoint, (change) is always a consideration,” he says. “And it’s probably going to become a bigger consideration in the future, with more environmental concerns, growth in the regulatory industry — they are going to be watching us closer and closer.”

In the case of dicamba-tolerant soybeans the labels are explicit, and they will be for 2,4-D-tolerant soybeans as well, Winter says, and from a liability perspective, the companies involved will not stand behind any or all alterations or deviations from those label rates.

“I know they are looking into drift-control adjuvants, just to see if it’s going to affect the volatility — and it definitely helps with controlling fines in your spray pattern when you’re out in the field,” he adds. “How it affects the volatility — because the companies invest a lot of money on these formulations trying to reduce volatility — is the question. It’s so it doesn’t vaporize off as easily as the old products did, and that’s why they won’t let you use ammonium sulphate (AMS), because that really impairs that new bond that they’re trying to use.”

The chemical companies are still examining additives to see if they adversely affect that volatility-reduction capability. Winter says if it doesn’t have an adverse impact on the formulation and its intent, he believes it could be a positive addition to the so-called “tool box.”

From Winter’s perspective, Lakeside has done a fair amount of promotion within its own organization.

“We’re evolving and we’re improving the tools, and the InterLock is just one more evolutionary tool,” says Winter. “It could be and should be promoted a little better.”

The post Tighter spray control in the field appeared first on Country Guide.

“They had got so big so fast, I didn’t know how I could compete,” Monea recalls. “I couldn’t offer what he was offering, so I went over one day and said, ‘This is what I’ve got. I’m not competition, but if you’re into a bind or a breakdown let me know.’”

A few weeks later, that other custom operator did have a forage chopper break down, and Monea was able to step in to help. Today, they work back and forth regularly and keep in communication constantly.

It turns out custom operators are pretty good at sorting out who’s serious about the business.

Similarly, about four hours south, when Sean Stanford started his custom spraying business four years ago, he too found that co-operation was more important than competition.

Stanford, who farms and custom sprays near Magrath, a half-hour south of Lethbridge, went to another established custom operator, about 30 km away, and looked for advice. “I told him my business plan,” he says. “I told him I didn’t want to compete with him, I wanted to run alongside him.”

“I told him I would not undercut prices and would not out-advertise him,” he adds, but it’s clear the two had already seen enough of each other that day to make a decision, and they’ve made it work ever since.

“If I’m too busy I will send some work to him, and if he’s too busy he’ll send some to me,” Stanford says. “We’re not in a business relationship, but we have a good friendship.”

Lurking behind it all, however, for both Stanford and Monea and for their partners, is the strategic recognition of just how vital great customer service has become for today’s custom farming businesses.

The days when custom operators only had to be good with a wrench are long gone.

It’s the same in southern Ontario, where Nick Lenos operates a custom farming operation near Villa Nova, a half hour south of Brantford with his brother Shawn and father John. Like Monea and Stanford, the Lenos family believes that in today’s rapidly evolving agriculture, the successful custom operators will be the ones who really are dedicated to their customers.

For Lenos, it’s the most important differentiator. “The customer takes precedence over your own land,” says Lenos. “Other growers in the area do custom work as well, and their land comes first.”

For those who want to be serious about the business, customer service means more than just showing up with the sprayer at the right time, although it does mean that too. Unlike farmers who manage their farms within boundaries they own and control, the custom operator has many people to please, and they also have to deal with the weather happening on the farms of all of their customers.

But even this emphasis on customer relations has to be part of a larger package. It’s also essential, for instance, for custom operators to hone their accounting and their HR management skills far beyond what’s necessary on many farms.

All this means their daily decisions are filtered through the usual production lenses used by farmers (seeding and planting rates, fertilizer and spray details and rates, scouting, harvesting and logistics), plus their internal business demands, plus their focus on customer relations.

At Lenos Custom Farming, though, it starts with a clear focus. They aim to treat the land they work for other people as their own.

“If you see something in the field, you stop and pick it up. If there’s a tree down you let the customer know. You try to keep up with what’s happening in their fields,” says Lenos.

“When a customer needs to get wheat in, we’ll go past other fields so that we can get it in for them.”

The Lenos operation works some of Ontario’s most challenging soils in a 30-km radius of Villa Nova, covering much of Haldimand and Norfolk counties. Soil there can range from heavy clay to blow sand, which means in order to serve their customers, they maintain a large equipment inventory. That’s an extra financial burden, but they try to supply complete crop production custom work, from tillage and planting to spraying and harvesting.

Lenos Custom Farming started with John in the 1970s. At that point he was a dairy farmer, but also started offering some custom farming services, as he also enjoyed working with equipment. In the 40 years since, the business has grown significantly to include Shawn and Nick, as well as a full-time employee and two or three more seasonally.

Build on communication

Having open communication with customers is important for the business to run well, says Lenos. That involves communications from the custom operator to the farmer and back. When weather is variable, finding the right field to work that day can help efficiency.

“It all stems back to communication,” says Lenos. “You have to ensure you get the job done.”

Monea requires three days notice for spraying at G&T Custom Harvesting. But if a rig is in the area and they can work it in, they will.

Monea finds that his customers still want to see him at some point during the day. Complaints about employees are lowered if the customers have had some interaction with him. They know he is still in charge.

Farming is different from industries like oil and gas, Monea says. There, a company president might have no direct contact with customers, and their role may be all about logistics and price. But that’s not going to cut it if you want to excel with a custom operation.

“If I’m not there with that relationship and trust that’s been built from the beginning, it hurts me,” Monea says. Even a half hour is enough, he says.

There are busy times in custom farming, and they often all come at once when a crop reaches a certain maturity at the same time in the same area, or when disease or insect pressures reach a threshold calling for treatment across broad acreage.

“It feels like we’re busy for a month in the spring, then there’s a lull and a week of bugs in canola and everybody wants it on the same day,” says Stanford, of Twisted Iron Farming, in southern Alberta. “The sprayer can sit for two weeks, then we’re going to 20 hours per day for three weeks to get caught up.”

Being able to tell a farmer who wants their insecticide on now that they have to wait two days is tough. Long-term relationships and trust make it easier.

Telling them the truth is the key, says Monea. That might sound simple, but it has been part of his business growth.

“I know people who were upset about custom operators,” he says. “They would ask when they would be coming, and the operators would say they’d be there tomorrow, instead of telling the truth, that they were backed up three to five days.”

“One of biggest things that makes us successful — we will make sure we are on time. We will book a little less to make sure we get to them.”

Custom farm operations tend to divide into two camps: farmers who spread their equipment costs over more land by doing some custom work, and those who are custom farm operators first.

Stanford at Twisted Iron Farming is in the first category. He and his wife Amberley run about 400 acres, not enough for a full-time farming career. Stanford works during the off-season as a mechanic in Lethbridge, but devotes himself full-time to custom spraying and his own acreage during the crop production season.

About four years ago he learned the local Crop Production Services (CPS) outlet was getting out of custom spraying. “I saw an opportunity to jump in. We bought our own sprayer and then asked them to send people our way,” he explains. Word of mouth advertising and relationship building also helped at the start.

He runs his Apache AS10-10 hard during the growing season, aiming to cover about 20,000 acres each year. Most of his customers are smaller, between 500 and 1,000 acres, but customers of that size value his service since they are unable to justify purchasing a high-clearance sprayer.

Complex record-keeping

Attention to detail is important for Stanford, and has to be for every custom sprayer, he says. Keeping track of the details requires dependable record-keeping systems.

In Stanford’s case, his wife Amberley looks after the accounting for the farm and the spraying business, but Stanford has to be able to hand her a stack of accurate record sheets at the end of the day.

Customers then get field record sheets. “Everyone has a paper trail and my butt’s covered,” Stanford says. “Without someone to full-time keep up the books, I would be drowning in paperwork. Having someone who is computer savvy and keeping it up is a lifesaver.”

The need for records is even more important now that so much data is created by cropping equipment, with data that needs to be shared with farmers.

In Monea’s business, his wife Holly also manages the books for the large operation. She was a bank account manager until deciding to switch to the business full time, where her role is crucial to managing their growth. They are now looking at whether they need more office staff, including a dispatcher for the numerous pieces of equipment they have on the fields in central Alberta.

The backbone of Monea’s custom farming business is silage harvesting, although the business has changed in the past 10 years as the number and size of feedlots and dairy farms has grown in his area.

Monea says he was running a round baler at 10 years old. “We were taught safety first and foremost. I was not unsupervised for very long.” But it gave Monea a taste of the business that became his career. He had an early passion for farming, and remembers reading seed guides and keeping up on crop trial data at 12 years old.

The Monea’s farm just under 5,000 acres, some owned, some rented, and look after seeding about 12,000 acres, including their own, and spray between 35,000 and 40,000 acres, including their own. They harvest custom silage for cereals and corn and also have a custom trucking business. They mostly haul grains, mainly canola to the Cargill crush plant in Camrose.

Troy bought out his father in 2002 and now is the sole owner and president of the company.

Outside help

Custom farm operators, like most farmers, have help they rely on outside of family. In Monea’s case, that’s 10 full-time employees, accountants and a supportive banking system.

Managing employees is one of his largest challenges, in part because with 10 employees, there is always some turnover.

“We are fortunate that we’ve had many people with us for many years but, still, the limitations come on the human side, not the equipment,” says Monea.

Even in an area of Alberta where laid-off oil and gas workers are plentiful due to the downturn in the oil economy, it’s still difficult to find people who want to work.

“There are two different classes of wages, two different ethics of work,” he says. He finds some employees are all about the wage. Others are about doing meaningful work that they like.

Monea tries to go the extra mile, helping out his employees who farm. Some can borrow a truck to move grain. Others can borrow equipment.

One employee bought an air seeder and Monea put a tractor on it and gave him some customers. Now that employee has built up his own customers, which means Monea essentially created a competitor, but he has no problem with it.

Monea, by the way, says technology has greatly reduced employee error, including maps in sprayers and the shutoffs in the equipment.“The risk of wrong application and mishaps is hugely downgraded with technology,” he says.

Trusted supplier

Being a trusted supplier to a farm is even more important when commodity prices drop. That has made the past few years, with low grain prices and more recently, cattle and hog prices, a challenge. Most custom operators are also farmers, so they know where the pain is coming from for farmers.

“We are still charging the same rates we were four or five years ago… and I hate it,” says Monea. He would like some of the increased efficiency of equipment to drive less cost to his customers, but those larger and more efficient machines have also doubled in price, especially for large self-propelled harvesters and combines.

Monea says the capacity increase has matched the price increase for harvesters, but the doubling of the price of combines is harder to take as the capacity has far from doubled.

“We haven’t changed our prices since we started,” says Stanford. “Fuel price is up 20 to 25 cents per litre since we started, but we’ve kept the billable price the same. We all know these are tough times.”

Larger and more efficient equipment has helped the Lenos family, but they are keeping equipment a bit longer. They also do most of their own repairs in-house. “These are big costs but you can’t push them onto the customer. You can’t put combine rates up $5 every year.”

Instead, you need to be the farmer’s best partner and supply a service they can’t match with the equipment they can afford to buy. In an era of growing precision advantages in farming, that’s an argument that sells.

“The biggest thing is the relationship with your customer and knowing their needs,” says Lenos. “You can work through a lot of good times and a lot of tough times when you understand their businesses.”

It’s business. But is it still a farm

Are custom farm operations just farms by another name?

Not according to government and taxation rules, which may be something you don’t discover until it’s too late, and the government is classifying you as a custom operator business and no longer a farm.

Make sure you maintain your qualified farm property designation, say David Engdahl and Shea Ferster, accountants, business advisers and partners with MNP in Saskatoon.

“I can’t stress how important it is to maintain that qualified farm property status,” Engdahl says.

Custom farm businesses are treated like any other non-farm business. That means there can also be implications for succession planning. For example, shares in a farm corporation can be rolled over and gifted tax-free to children or grandchildren, which can’t happen in other non-farming corporations.

Engdahl says the custom operators he works with separate their businesses, so that the farming that they do will be managed as a farm, with the tax advantages of a farm, and the custom farming business will be run separately.

A second major area of difference between farm business and custom farm operations is that farm businesses are taxed on a cash basis, while other businesses are taxed on accrual basis. That means, for instance, that farms can time a grain cheque for the best tax outcome.

In non-farm businesses, income is taxable after the work is performed.

Expenses can be the biggest challenge when the business is split between a farm and a custom business. Say a grain buggy tire goes while you are in one of your fields. The tire blew while doing work for the farm business, but most of its wear may have been while running the roads and fields for the custom farming business. How do you apportion the expense?

Another challenge is accounting for equipment. Custom farmers usually use acres to determine whether the machine is used more for their farm or custom work businesses.

However, other measures like hours may be necessary. Engdahl uses a bunk silage pack tractor as an example of a piece of equipment that runs for hours, but covers little acreage.

Other important factors include making sure you have the proper liability insurance coverage for running the roads and working other people’s land as a custom operator. Farm insurance packages won’t cover it. And in some provinces custom operators will qualify under workplace protection legislation, while farms may not, or may be under different levels of regulation.

The post Custom business appeared first on Country Guide.

“They apply spray under conditions that a ground rig can’t — for example, with soil moisture. They cover much more area than a ground rig ever can so they can be more timely.

”Jill Lane, executive director of the Canadian Aerial Applicators Association (CAAA), agrees, writing by email that more and more Prairie acres are being sprayed from the air.

If you’re considering aerial fungicide application this season, make sure to ask about timing and water volume.

Timing: Whether you’re spraying from the ground or from the air, timing is the most critical issue. “Even just a day or two on either side of an ideal timing can make a big difference in terms of effectiveness,” says Wolf.

Lane concurs. Farmers and agronomists should make sure aerial applicators can provide the service within the application window.

Water volume: Water volume is also key. Wolf recommends asking these questions: “What water volume are you applying? What are you doing to control drift? What does the label say for water volume? How do you reconcile those things? What would it cost to do more water?”

Some fixed-wing aircraft are high capacity, capable of ferrying 800 U.S. gallons, Wolf says. But new atomizer technologies allow some applicators to push water volumes lower. Wolf has had calls from people wondering how aerial applicators can pull it off.

“They’re doing it because they’re using a much finer spray. They have a tremendous drift risk as a result of that. They are certainly cautious about when they spray. But there’s no magic here.”

Applying a finer spay than the label allows is illegal, Wolf says, because of the drift risk. “That is something that we all have to respect because our business is at stake here,” says Wolf.

Lane says the CAAA only supports applications that follow labels.

Like other ag businesses, the aerial application industry is facing growing regulations and public pressure. Lane recommends farmers and agrologists look for aerial applicators who hold all provincial and federal licences.

Helicopter application still a niche

Helicopters seem to have an edge over fixed wing aircraft in some situations. They can turn more quickly and handle fields with more obstacles. They also come with their own landing pad, usually on the back of the tender truck.

But the CAAA hasn’t seen a big increase in helicopter use in either agriculture or forestry, says Lane.

Some fixed-wing operators have added a helicopter to their fleet, she says. The few helicopter companies expanding into aerial application could be driven by slower times in their own market, such as oil, she adds.

Wolf says helicopter applicators are more common in the U.S. In Western Canada, fields tend to be large and uniform, making them suitable for fixed wing aircraft. But helicopters do compete remarkably well in some areas, he adds.

Wolf sees opportunities with helicopters to have a low-drift spray because other industries where helicopters are used have always had low-drift requirements. “They actually have a number of atomizers at their disposal that drift less than fixed-wing aircraft.”

If a helicopter uses the same CP nozzles used by fixed-wing aircraft, the helicopter’s slower speed should add up to a coarser spray. “The faster they fly, typically the finer the spray becomes.”

Wolf hasn’t done any work on calibration of helicopters yet. But he has worked with fixed-wing aircraft. Asked whether fixed-wing aircraft push spray into the canopy, he said based on his own first-hand experience, they don’t. “It’s a bit of a myth.”

Wolf hasn’t seen first-hand whether rotary aircraft will force the spray into the crop canopy. But he’s sceptical of such claims for several reasons:

• The helicopter only produces enough downdraft to stay aloft, so the lighter the aircraft, the less downdraft.
• Forward speed disperses the downdraft force over distance. “So the actual amount of downdraft per square metre is quite low because you’re moving forward so quickly.”
• Flying height also comes into play. To avoid wingtip vortices, pilots typically fly higher than they once did.
• The wind travelling down from the wing arrives at the canopy before any droplets.

Wolf hasn’t entirely ruled out downdraft playing a role with rotary aircraft.

“But I wouldn’t get one because of it,” he says.

And he wouldn’t use it as a reason to cut water volumes, either.

For more information on the Canadian Aerial Applicators Association, plus an online member directory, visit canadianaerialapplicators.com.

This article first appeared in the June 7, 2016 issue of Grainews

The post Applying fungicide by air appeared first on Country Guide.

“We start at the chemical inductor and go from there,” says Munro, who farms and works at Central Alberta Co-op’s Green Way Agro Centre in Innisfail. Just cleaning the tank isn’t good enough.

Sprayer specialist Tom Wolf — @nozzle_guy — echoed this with a Twitter message: “(It’s) important to think of the whole sprayer. Tank, hoses, valves, screens, boom ends, dual-flow plumbing. We found that surface area of plumbing is about one-third of tank wall area. Significant, but can’t see it.”

Munro is reminded pretty much every year of the value of his complete clean-out policy. In 2015, a Co-op customer of his had been spraying PrePass (Groups 2 and 9) ahead of a cereal crop. The next time he used the sprayer was to apply straight Assure on canola with a grassy weed problem. Interestingly, the damage — which became obvious a few days later — occurred only on the last 10 acres or so of the first tank.

So what happened? “The sprayer had a front load and side load system, and we figure the side load didn’t get flushed,” Munro says. “Once the tank level dropped below the side inlet, the Group 2 residue dropped back into the tank.”

Complete clean-outs can seem like too much time to spend between jobs, but Keith Gabert, agronomy specialist with the Canola Council of Canada, says it’s a job that has to be done. “Herbicide injury caused by sprayer contamination is preventable,” he says. “You just have to take the time.”

Time savers

Set up a clean water source on board the sprayer with its own pump that only ever handles clean water and tank cleaning solution. Then use that clean water source strategically.

“Multiple smaller flushes have proven more effective than one large flush,” Gabert says. For example, two washes with 70 gallons each or three with 30 gallons each are just as effective as a single 600-gallon wash — and use way less water.

Munro uses three small rinses: water, then water plus ammonia-based cleaner, then water again.

“We start at the inductor, cycling clean water through there then to the sprayer. The sprayer cycles that water for 10 to 15 minutes, then we spray it out in the field,” Munro says. “While that is happening, we reload the inductor with water and Finish (cleaning agent) and cycle that in the inductor while the sprayer is cycling the water, and so on.”

Continuous rinsing

Continuous rinsing is another idea gaining traction in Europe. Tom Wolf and his mates describe the concept in the article “Continuous rinsing” at their sprayers101.com website. Continuous rinsing works like this:

As soon as the tank is empty, the operator switches on the dedicated clean water pump to deliver clean water through the tank’s wash-down nozzles. The main product pump then delivers the wash-down liquid to the boom and return lines.

“Because the clean water pump will deliver less than the boom flow, the cleaning mixture is delivered somewhat intermittently. We are told that this helps with the cleaning action of the lines,” the article says.

Once the clean water tank is empty, the pressure drops again for the final time and the tank rinsate is now very dilute.

Continuous rinsing takes only about half as long as the batch mode, according to testing in Europe. It also uses less water. And, as the article says, “the sprayer never has to stop, and the operator never dismounts.”

While this European technology will need some adjustment for the size of North American sprayers, Wolf does see continuous rinsing as a positive development to save time and water and to take some of the pain out of tank clean-out.

Another time saver is the Hypro Express boom end cap. This is described in another recommended sprayers101.com article called “Top sprayer retrofits.”

The few inches of boom between the last nozzle and the boom end can trap spray water, and Wolf’s research has shown these areas are not easily rinsed clean. That is why many sprayer operators have retrofitted their sprayers with “jobber ball valves” at all boom ends, as Gabert describes them.

Hypro’s Express boom end cap (see below) is an alternative to the ball valves. It allows the last nozzle body to be mounted right at the end of the boom so there’s no extra space for spray water to hide. As a bonus, the end cap also bleeds off any air bubbles in the line. This isn’t really a clean-out issue, but it does improve spray on-off precision — which is particularly useful for sectional control.

Other tips to prevent sprayer contamination

• Spray immediately after filling and spray until the tank is empty. When some herbicides, particularly Group 2s, are left in the tank for extended periods, they can leave deposits that, if not cleaned out well, may come back into the spray solution in subsequent sprays. And some herbicides and their surfactants, Liberty for one, can be very good at lifting herbicide residues from tank walls and sprayer plumbing. The longer such products are in the tank, i.e. during a rain delay or breakdown, the more scrubbing they could do.
• Look for solid herbicide residue. Some herbicides may precipitate out of solution and many dry herbicides use clay as a carrier. These particles can become trapped in some parts of the sprayer or plumbing. Visual inspection can identify these problem areas and ensure that they are cleaned properly.
• Check filters and nozzle bodies. Nozzle screens and in-line filters can be a significant reservoir for undiluted or undissolved herbicide and are too often overlooked in sprayer decontamination. Remove all filters and nozzle screens and thoroughly clean in fresh water. Run clean water through plumbing leading to the screens. When rinsing the boom, rotate through all nozzles in a multiple body.To speed this along, Munro keeps a clean set of filters in a five-gallon pail of water and Finish cleaning agent. He puts the clean filters on when clean-out is done, then puts the old set of filters into the cleaned pail for next time.
• Use a tank-cleaning additive with the rinse water. Check product labels to see which cleaner is recommended. For some, ammonia alone is enough. For some, a detergent (surfactant) alone is enough. For others, a combination of both is required.

How to ID a sprayer contamination issue

It takes days or weeks to identify a spray tank contamination issue because operators rarely notice anything amiss during application. The problem isn’t apparent until plants start to show symptoms. Here are some clues to look for:

• Misshapen growth. Look for stunted growth on leaves and roots, leathery leaves, twisted stems, clumpy root hairs or otherwise odd root development. Note that these symptoms can also result from herbicide carryover in the field.
• Patterns in the field. Look for damage that starts off severe then gets progressively less and finally ends after a few sprayer passes. This indicates something left over in the booms and filters that was sprayed out within the first few passes.
  Patterns that clearly relate to this year’s sprayer passes are caused by sprayer contamination, spray conditions or product selection issues. If damage is across the whole field but is lower in corners where the boom moved faster and deposited less product or is lower (or non-existent) in sprayer misses, this indicates a spray tank contamination that affected the whole load.

Note that in some cases crop damage may not occur until the operator uses an active ingredient or surfactant particularly good at scrubbing. This could be many loads after the original contamination.

The post Where crop spray chemical goes, clean those appeared first on Country Guide.

Whether they’re applying a fungicide to a wheat field or corn crop, or whether they’re engaged in seeding a cover crop, aerial applicators are still a novelty on most farms, even as the circumstances necessitating their use are seemingly on the rise.

In spite of the glamour associated with flying, aerial applicators are facing the same cost-efficiency challenges that growers are contending with. Farmers may believe they’re in tough times these days, grappling with higher costs for seed, fertilizers, inputs, pesticide and fuel, but the pilots running these planes and ’copters are just as challenged in their operations.

As different as their machines are, aerial applicators are united in one other aspect: row-crop farming doesn’t make up a large portion of their annual income, despite the perception that more farmers are calling for their services. Still, it’s hard to discount the demand that does come from farming practices.

For most fliers, the bulk of their business comes from the forestry industry, with most of that taken up by seeding or reseeding operations throughout northern Ontario and even into Quebec and Western Canada. Agricultural applications may account for only 30 to 40 per cent, depending on the location of the service provider.

Paul Zimmer of Zimmer Air Services, near Blenheim, Ont., says it’s getting harder to justify some of the conditions that go with the farming portion of his business, something he doesn’t like to concede after 40 years of providing aerial application services.

“Right now, I would say that because of the fungicides that growers put on their corn and bean crops, we’re seeing a bit of resurgence in aerial applications,” says Zimmer. But that upsurge hides a difficult reality, he says. “We’re being regulated and really pushed out of business.”

The same crop-protection hoops and hurdles confounding farmers are taking their toll on Zimmer and many of his colleagues. The regulatory oversight imposed by the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change (MOECC) is one of the biggest factors. Most products registered for in-crop use now require an aerial application permit process, and according to the MOECC Permit Application Guide for Aerial Application of Agricultural Pesticides, it can take up to 45 business days (nine weeks) to gain approval for a request for a permit.

“If that isn’t a way of saying, ‘You’re not going to do it,’ I don’t know what is,” says Zimmer. Even at two to three weeks, working as he does with an MOECC pesticide specialist who he knows, a farmer facing an outbreak of fusarium head blight can quickly run out of time. “If you have a crop dying from a fungus or it’s being drowned out by excessive rain, can you wait three weeks for a permit? And it’s no different than the neonic situation: this government is not agriculture friendly.”

It’s not even that it’s a national strategy, adds Zimmer, noting that there is no such permit approval process for Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan or Alberta.

Same technologies, different realities

Zimmer uses many of the same technologies that farmers are using, such as GPS. There are also new advances in spray equipment such as flow control (if he slows his flight down a field, the flow adjusts accordingly) and automatic shut-offs for the end of a row.

But from an agricultural perspective, investing in those technologies is a tough call some years.

“There are advances going into our machines, but I’m never certain of how much I’m going to do since we’re basically the last resort,” says Zimmer, referring to both spray and seeding applications for farmers. “With seeding, that’s very hit and miss — we might not do that for two or three years. Yet having said that, over the past two to three years, there seems to be a resurgence and we seem to be getting a lot of calls about cover crops.”

Despite such an upturn in interest and the potential for more business in agriculture, Zimmer points out that most farmers who are calling about seeding cover crops often want it done sometime during the late summer, between mid-August and early September. But that’s the time of year when he has packed up his helicopters and headed north.

“So we’re struggling with whether we should keep a machine around to do that, but again, seeding isn’t a big money generator for us,” says Zimmer. “It’s a lot more work because you’re hauling heavy loads, plus you have to have guys on the ground to help the process.”

Best hope may be cover crops

In spite of the associated costs and the logistical headaches of answering the demands of growers for cover crops, Paul Hodgins believes that’s where there’s a greater potential. As president of General Airspray Ltd. of Lucan, Ont., he has also seen an increased demand for his services in air seeding cover crops.

Aerial applications for Hodgins generally took a hit with the recession in 2008. He notes that it often takes two years for the forestry industry to react to such an economic downturn, which is what happened this time too, with the crunch coming in 2010. About that same time, he started getting calls about spraying fungicides on corn as a growth regulator. His first was in 2007, and originally, the farmer didn’t like his asking price.

“Then BASF started calling, and said, ‘We still want you to put about a dozen plots in: we’ll pay you to spray it and the farmer will buy the chemical,” recalls Hodgins. “So we ended up doing 35 plots for them between Lucan and Exeter, and the next year, we did 12,000 acres.”

Then the use of fungicides in corn tailed off, at least where Hodgins was concerned, and he put it down to a drop in commodity prices. Yet in subsequent years he has seen the demand increase with higher grain prices.

“I have one big customer who says, ‘I will drive through my wheat, and I’ll drive through my beans, but I will NOT drive through my corn,’” says Hodgins.

Of late, Hodgins has been fielding more requests and doing more fact-finding about cover crops, much the same as Zimmer. For Hodgins, there’s been interest in ryegrass as a cover, as well as oilseed radish, and even some more elaborate blends which include crimson clover. Just as cropping plans and practices differ from farmer to farmer, so can the demand for a cover crop.

Like Zimmer, however, Hodgins recognizes that call for the air seeding of a winter cereal comes only as a last-minute decision by growers, often made in spite of any higher operating or seed costs. Some growers value maintaining their rotations, while others who are more concerned with growing conditions heading into winter may opt for another year of soybeans.

Size and distance

In that sense, Hodgins believes that farm size is playing a great role in calling in an aerial applicator. As the size of the operation grows, so does their skittishness. They’ve got more acres to cover, yet they often also are better at appreciating the financial penalty if they don’t get the job done.

Another factor that plays a significant part of the decision-making process — for the flying services — is tied to travel, and how far will they go to do business. Given the tighter margins and demand for keeping their costs manageable, both Zimmer and Hodgins opt to do business as close to home as they can. Although it’s true that Hodgins needs a runway from which to operate while Zimmer can put one of his Robinson R44s on a flatbed truck and haul to a job site, there is a limit to how far Zimmer will go.

“In agriculture, as long as I can make the numbers work, we’ll go,” says Zimmer, who went to New Liskeard and planted a few thousand acres of winter wheat last fall. “But when things are busy, I’m going to stick closer to Kitchener, west and maybe a little north. We don’t do too much the other side of Toronto, but if there’s a call for it and it can make economic sense, and we can put our helicopters on our trailers, then we’ll go. That’s why we truck these around: it’s hard enough to compete and these machines are so expensive on a per-hour basis, even compared to an airplane.”

From a logistics perspective, Hodgins only needs a runway close to a farmer’s field. There, the dealer or farmer can park a water truck and load it along with the fungicide, seed or the fertilizer.

So, which is better, a helicopter or a fixed-wing? Zimmer and Hodgins agree that each has its strengths: helicopters don’t require a runway but airplanes can perform slightly tighter turns to get coverage on unique angles in a field.

Both also provide good coverage, including below the canopy.

“We get good penetration from our AgCat,” says Hodgins. “A ground sprayer’s going at five miles an hour, whereas we’re getting 110, so we have the speed of the spray being driven into the canopy.”

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