Farmer Leslie
In the Brooder
- Feb 25, 2015
- 15
- 0
- 32
Hi, folks, check out my latest blog post "No-Till: The Road to Roundup and GMOs."In the early 1980s my farmer husband and I were invited to a dinner at a local steakhouse, an evening I later came to think of as the Poison Supper. At the time, it pleased me my husband and I were invited to the event where we sat next to seasoned farm couples many years our senior. An ag chemical company sponsored the event, and along with our rib eye steaks came a colorful presentation about a new herbicide guaranteed to kill the weeds in our soybean crop without killing the soybean plants.
The summer before, my farmer husband had attended the first No-Till Field Day in Milan, Tennessee, a University of Tennessee sponsored event where corporate ag representatives demoed new equipment and offered advice on no-till strategies. My farmer husband came home beaming with excitement. No-till technology wasn’t entirely new to us. My father in law owned a no-till planter which made it possible to plant without plowing. The new news on the no-till front was herbicide, chemical weed control.
Traditionally, famers plowed before they planted to rid the field of weeds and after the crop came up dragged weeds out from between the rows with a cultivator, a device with spade-like feet you attached to the tractor. If you were a trendsetting farmer using a no-till planter, before planting you mowed or burned the field. You still had to deal with the weeds that came up afterwards by cultivating.
Not any more, or so the ag chemical industry promised. By the new technique, you attached a spray rig to the tractor, spraying herbicide to kill weeds and planting in the same operation, meaning fewer trips through the field so less compaction from the heavy tractor and reducing fuel costs. For the weeds that came after you planted, you sprayed again, a herbicide specially formulated to kill the weeds without killing your soybean or corn crop. Tricky business.
My farmer husband tried some of the herbicide promoted at the Poison Supper. The sicklepod weed plaguing his soybean crop turned yellow and sickly looking. So did the beans. The company rep paid us a visit, attributed our sick soybeans to drought conditions and predicted they’d recover. The soybeans survived but the yield was half what we hoped for.
Until then, my husband had only once before sprayed a chemical on a crop, a pesticide—a bug killer—when grasshoppers were eating their way through our bean field leaving bare stems in their wake. Driving the tractor through the field with a respirator strapped to his face, my farmer husband looked like giant bug himself. That evening he declined supper. I heard him in bathroom vomiting.
I hoped he would never need to spray a field again. He agreed about the dangers of pesticides, but the chemicals farmers used for weed control were safe, he argued. ...READ MORE at http://www.leslielytle.net/#!blog/c7bm.
The summer before, my farmer husband had attended the first No-Till Field Day in Milan, Tennessee, a University of Tennessee sponsored event where corporate ag representatives demoed new equipment and offered advice on no-till strategies. My farmer husband came home beaming with excitement. No-till technology wasn’t entirely new to us. My father in law owned a no-till planter which made it possible to plant without plowing. The new news on the no-till front was herbicide, chemical weed control.
Traditionally, famers plowed before they planted to rid the field of weeds and after the crop came up dragged weeds out from between the rows with a cultivator, a device with spade-like feet you attached to the tractor. If you were a trendsetting farmer using a no-till planter, before planting you mowed or burned the field. You still had to deal with the weeds that came up afterwards by cultivating.
Not any more, or so the ag chemical industry promised. By the new technique, you attached a spray rig to the tractor, spraying herbicide to kill weeds and planting in the same operation, meaning fewer trips through the field so less compaction from the heavy tractor and reducing fuel costs. For the weeds that came after you planted, you sprayed again, a herbicide specially formulated to kill the weeds without killing your soybean or corn crop. Tricky business.
My farmer husband tried some of the herbicide promoted at the Poison Supper. The sicklepod weed plaguing his soybean crop turned yellow and sickly looking. So did the beans. The company rep paid us a visit, attributed our sick soybeans to drought conditions and predicted they’d recover. The soybeans survived but the yield was half what we hoped for.
Until then, my husband had only once before sprayed a chemical on a crop, a pesticide—a bug killer—when grasshoppers were eating their way through our bean field leaving bare stems in their wake. Driving the tractor through the field with a respirator strapped to his face, my farmer husband looked like giant bug himself. That evening he declined supper. I heard him in bathroom vomiting.
I hoped he would never need to spray a field again. He agreed about the dangers of pesticides, but the chemicals farmers used for weed control were safe, he argued. ...READ MORE at http://www.leslielytle.net/#!blog/c7bm.
