SASKATOON – Cowcockle got your goat? Shepherd’s purse emptying your wallet? Army worms marching against your profits? Crop protection can be a complicated matter, but a new computer program can help.
Options for crop protection products often come from dealers or the product manufacturers themselves. Farmers can turn to their provincial crop protection guides, but all the information must be sifted through to make pesticide decisions.
The Prairie Crop Protection Planner software program makes the choices simpler.
The software allows farmers to select the crop that is planted, the type of weeds, insects or diseases that need to be controlled and provides a summary of options that can be printed or saved on the computer.
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The producer keys into the computer the farm name, land and field descriptions including size in acres, sprayer tank capacity and other related information.
Once this information is placed in the database it remains there, including spraying decisions made in any current or past year.
Records providing the user with a history of the products sprayed from year to year makes herbicide rotation easier, which helps to prevent weed resistance. Residues are also tracked by the program since cropping rotations may be affected by herbicide choices.
The producer can select a crop such as flax and up to four weed problems such as volunteer wheat, mustard and green foxtail. The computer program will recommend a pre-seeding treatment of Touchdown or in-crop solutions of Fusion and MCPA or Select and MCPA.
The software shows the prices of the various choices, based on the manufacturer’s recommended retail pricing. Also listed will be the cost per acre.
The program also allows the user to enter predicted losses due to pests to help determine if spraying will pay off.
The Crop Protection Planner is available for Windows or DOS platforms and costs $84.95. It can be ordered from the extension division of the University of Saskatchewan.
