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Australian farmer stays ahead of herbicide resistance

A dedicated no-till farmer from Australia says broad spectrum herbicides can be successfully used while avoiding resistance.

Bill Crabtree has sworn off tillage in favor of controlling weeds with glyphosate. Australia’s issues with glyphosate resistant weeds are far fewer than in the U.S. By far its biggest case of resistance, according to Crabtree, was with annual ryegrass, and that was in 1996.

“We had it before we had Roundup-Ready crops, and we’ve learned to manage it and manage it quite well actually,” Crabtree told Brownfield Ag News during a break in the Global Farmer Roundtable in Des Moines.

“There are lots of different ways to manage weeds and I still think you can do it within no-till,” he said, “I don’t think you need tillage to manage herbicide resistance.”

Crabtree, who grows more than 13,000 acres of wheat and canola in western Australia, was among eleven farmers participating in the Global Farmer Roundtable.

AUDIO: Bill Crabtree (10 min. MP3)

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