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Southwest Illinois | I admit to being on the fence on this a bit. From my perspective we have the cleanest fields we have had since about 5 years ago with less investment. I also realize there is some drift issues even if all label instructions were followed. I had two neighbors that had cupping damage. The first one is tough because I along with another farmer sprayed extend next to his field. We sprayed in early June and the other neighbor about 2 weeks later. The cupping did not appear until after July 1. The other case is certainly drift from our field. This neighbor is not unreasonable but not happy. Keep in mind he sprayed his at the same time with some home made concoction with who knows what that actually killed his beans wherever they overlapped with the sprayer. Of course about the time his beans came back from their near death experience the new growth showed some cupping. He has a "what don't kill beans makes them yield more" mentality, yet know he has some cupping he thinks his beans have significant yield loss. He may be right, but the conversations are difficult and how to determine yield loss will be hard to do.
The extent of the damage is hard to estimate in terms of how many fields have been impacted. One field of damage and the coffee shops turn it into an epidemic. We new all the issues with dicamba and its volitility. My opinion is that Extend is no less volitile than Clarity, but is better than the old dicamba is things like Banvil that we used 20 years ago.
I do think this letter from Frailey is certainly a new tone as just a few weeks ago he was saying that the majority of the damage was coming from off label applications. I think that many coops and custom applicators are saying they will not spry it next year has him in damage control. | |
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open letter from Rob Fraley
