Every once in awhile promising news comes along that gives rise to hope. For those struggling to find a reason to believe that meaningful change is possible in American agriculture, look no further than what Adam and Seth Chappell have accomplished on their 8,000 acre Arkansas farm. Their story is told well and in detail […]
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DTN Progressive Farmer reports that dicamba-resistant weeds appear to have started to crop up in the Midwest and Midsouth regions. These soy and cotton growing regions have seen a huge increase in dicamba use over the last couple of years since dicamba-resistant varieties of these crops were introduced. An estimated 60 million acres of dicamba […]
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Three new Xtend-dicamba related items have been posted recently on Hygeia. Collectively they frame what is to come as farmers and herbicide applicators begin the 2019 herbicide spray season. In a fact-filled piece in DTN, Emily Unglesbee traces the march of glyphosate-resistant Palmer amaranth across the southeast, and then to the north and west. This […]
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Dan Charles, NPR’s widely respected food and agriculture correspondent, has written extensively about the dicamba drift crisis over the past couple of years (here are just a few of his pieces that were posted to the Managing Weeds for Healthy Kids site). In his latest NPR piece entitled “Is Fear Driving Sales Of Monsanto’s Dicamba-Proof Soybeans?,” he […]
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DTN staff reporter Emily Unglesbee has ably covered the dicamba-drift crisis over the past couple of years. Her latest is a detailed, three-part series on Palmer amaranth, “possibly the most aggressive weed American farmers have ever faced” (Unglesbee, 2019a). Palmer amaranth is so scary because of its “spectacular reproductive abilities” and it’s extreme adaptability. This […]
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In an experiment conducted in Missouri, researchers have identified Palmer amaranth that is resistant to six herbicides. Amaranthus palmerii is a one tough weed. When full grown, at its base, stalks can match the circumference of a man’s wrist. One plant can set over 400,000 seeds. It has a long history of herbicide resistance, and […]
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Herbicide-resistant weeds are a common topic around here, so we were interested in this new science out of Argentina identifying a new “superweed” resistant to glyphosate, dicamba, and 2,4-D. Plus, the researchers learned more about the mechanism of herbicide resistance in one of the most common weed families – the Amaranths (Amaranthus species). Farmers throughout the croplands of the […]
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Few people engaged today in the important debates over regulation of agricultural biotechnology know or remember much about the critical debates that unfolded when the gen-one wave of ag biotechnologies first hit the beach. Today, as CRISPR-driven, largely untested technology rolls on shore, attention to lessons learned in the past (but thus far unheeded) might […]
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In an in-depth piece that ran in The Oregonian and online at Oregon Live, writer Julia Rosen with High Country News tells the sorry tale of how glyphosate resistant creeping bentgrass meant for high-dollar golf courses has become a thorn in the side of high-desert farmers and ranchers along the Oregon-Washington-Idaho border. Starting in the 1990s, two […]
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“Weeds are winning the war against herbicide resistance.” This stark analysis is part of the title of a new Scientific American deep-dive into efforts to battle weed resistance. The author, Brooke Borel, summarizes the latest science, including research done at North Carolina State University. Scientists at NC State reached the sobering conclusion that “[there is a] […]
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