Humans are creatures of habit. We find comfort in familiarity.
We are also creatures who don’t always pay enough attention to the consequences of our decisions, preferring immediate gratification over what is in our best interests over the longer term.
Who hasn’t stopped for fatty fast food on the way home from work, despite repeated health warnings?
It’s human nature.
But if we could break free from our old habits and build new ones, which although not the same, could prove equally as comforting and rewarding over time, shouldn’t we?
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Western Canadian farmers have that opportunity before them now.
Herbicide resistant weeds have been creeping across the West for years. Glyphosate resistant kochia is already a reality and should wild oats also develop resistance to glyphosate prairie farmers could see their weed headaches intensified.
The problem stems from a system that many refer to as easy farming. It essentially involves glyphosate use, year after year, with little thought to changes in chemistry or to crop rotations.
And why not? Glyphosate is cheap compared to other weed control options, it’s effective and it’s easy to use. And if a farmer can achieve an efficiently run business at a fair profit, that’s a desirable outcome in our society. Who would blame any business for doing the same?
But examples are starting to appear from other parts of the world of what can happen when the proverbial chickens come home to roost.
In Australia, new equipment and add-ons, such as the Weed Destructor, are gaining attention because farmers there have few remaining options for effective weed control. Farmers in western Australia in particular are so hard pressed that some have described agriculture there as farming the weeds. In other words, all farm decisions revolve around weed control — equipment purchases, seeding choices and production practices, as well as crop and chemical rotations.
Profit and market prices carry much less weight.
In the United States, meanwhile, Palmer amaranth has been described as a looming “train wreck.” The aggressive weed has developed glyphosate resistance in cotton, corn and soybean crops in the southern U.S. Once in a field, there are few options for control, forcing farmers to pay to have it ripped out by hand. When allowed to compete through the growing season, it has been shown to reduce corn yields by 91 percent and soybeans by 79 percent. It has inched northward and is now about 500 kilometres from the Canadian border.
With corn and soybeans touted as future money makers for Canadian farmers, Palmer amaranth will not stay south of the border for long.
We are fortunate in Canada. We have time to adapt our practices and learn from the harsh lessons of others.
There are still various tools and weed control options available to break, or at least slow, the tide of gylphosate resistance.
Should we need more evidence of its existence, one has only to consider the new ‘stacked trait’ seed options now offered by major crop protection companies. If glyphosate was still as effective as it was 20 years ago, there would be no need for this new seed technology, which adds 2, 4-D tolerance to gyphosate tolerance, for example, to help combat glyphosate resistant weeds. There are concerns that stacked trait seeds could even make the problem worse by further encouraging so-called easy agriculture.
It is up to farmers to make sure this does not happen. The best weed control option is still proper crop rotations and varying chemical modes of action.
Research is ongoing for new weed control options, including seed genetics, chemicals, rotation options, production practices and new equipment designs and adaptations.
But, ultimately, it is up to farmers to take appropriate steps now to avoid the heavy price that will inevitably come should they ignore the warnings.
