WEST FARGO, N.D. - It might take a weed "disaster" before the majority of farmers adopt newer, more sustainable practices, said Lee Briese of Edgeley, N.D. The crop consultant has been with Centrol Inc. of Twin Valley, N.D., for more than 17 years, and deals with 39 clients in six counties. He spoke Dec. 13 at the annual Conservation Tillage Conference in Fargo, N.D.
Farmers are concerned about weeds becoming resistant to herbicides used on crops that have been genetically modified to withstand herbicides, and Briese said he's looking for a new direction.
"I already think we have significant problems," he said, adding about 90 percent of his fields have weed resistance problems at different levels. "Some fields are at high levels, some are just beginning. And that's just with a few weeds."
Briese pushes crop rotation, alternative crops and other tools to suppress weeds, in addition to the chemical tools farmers often lean on too heavily. "I'm talking about actually using tools that we're doing anyway with that are intended as weed management, and adding in cover crops and residue and other things we know that work for weed control, and using them in an agricultural system," he said.
Some of the biggest stumbling blocks are "just the resistance to change" and the "lack of knowledge and understanding in how they can be incorporated together."
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Briese estimated about 30 percent of his clients use the techniques to a significant amount. Another 30 percent are adopting "parts and pieces" and then a third is "quite resistant."
Biological system
Primarily, Briese advocates soil health-focused biological system.
"The idea is to use more plants to compete with weeds in multiple situations in multiple times of the year and use not only the living plant but the dead tissue - the mulch, the residue - to avoid the weed's ability to get what it needs, such as nutrients, water and sunlight," he said.
Some farmers are concerned about other crops - cover crops in the system - being competitive with the primary crop, and yield threats.
"However, there are a lot of times during the year where it is not a significant threat," Briese said. "We need to change that idea that a beautiful cornfield isn't one that just has corn in it."
Rules on federal crop insurance create some questions about the risk of planting cover crops and the impact on insured yields.
"There are times - depending on a grower's risk-benefit process - where they're willing to sacrifice some of the safety net of crop insurance to do some of the management that's going to help them," he said.
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But farm programs and crop insurance do allow for assistance, though some of the allowances are "a little bit later" in the growing season than he'd preferred.
Briese also told conference-goers about the cost of leaving weeds to go to seed. A single kochia plant, for example, produces 300,000 seeds. To compare, most corn growers produce about 30,000 seeds per acre.
Briese showed photographs he's taken in one of his fields of soybeans that was choked with kochia weeds. The price of the beans would be unlikely to pay for the harvest costs.
Instead of letting the weeds go to seed, farmers need to consider options such as mowing or destroying that part of the field, he says.
Farmers can improve their weed resistance problems by using rye or other alternative crops to target certain weed infestations - sacrificing short-term returns to combat weeds they'd have to fight for 10 to 15 years.
