EDMONTON – A combination of growing herbicide resistance, a shift in weed populations and fewer herbicide choices will affect the future of agriculture, farmers at a crop conference were told.
Hansjoerg Kraehmer, a researcher with Bayer Cropscience in Germany, said investment in herbicide research by agriculture companies has already dropped dramatically.
Chemical company mergers and a shift away from agriculture to higher value research will limit the number of herbicides registered in the future, he added.
The number of patents filed by the agriculture industry dropped to 50 in 2005 from 300 in 1990, Kraehmer told farmers at the Farm Tech 2007 conference.
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“Many companies have stopped investing in herbicides,” he said.
“The probability for the farmer to get new tools is pretty low.”
With fewer new agriculture herbicides expected to come onto the market, Kraehmer told farmers to use their existing herbicides wisely.
Farmers need to begin using a variety of tank mixes and herbicides, crop rotations and timing to prevent the development of herbicide resistance in weeds.
“A few herbicides will stay in the market and with their overuse there will be resistant weeds. There will be shifts towards weeds that cannot be easily controlled,” he said.
“The farmer better think about the situation and use the tools he has right now very carefully, very consciously, or otherwise he will face serious problems in the future.”
More than 95 percent of canola grown in Canada uses three herbicide tolerant systems: Roundup, Clearfield and Liberty technology.
Kraehmer said farmers shouldn’t rely on any single technology exclusively but rotate their chemicals and technology to avoid weed resistance.
The dominant use of glyphosate in agriculture crops will speed the development of weed resistance to that herbicide, he added.
“Glyphosate will continue to be the most common and overused chemical. Where he has the choice he should change his herbicide regimes from crop to crop and not use glyphosate in every crop. Glyphosate is not the eternal solution. We need other herbicides.”
Kraehmer said herbicide tolerant crops will continue to dominate farming in the future. With the ending of patents on herbicides, farmers will see prices drop.
Instead of earning profits from herbicide sales, agriculture companies will receive value through other traits within the seed.
They will develop traits such as an essential amino acid known as high lysine corn that is needed for chicken feed.
They will also put more emphasis and receive more value from crops with low saturated fats and high amounts of unsaturated fats in soybean and canola, he said.
