News
Iowa farmer sticks with dicamba despite off-target problems
A southwest Iowa farmer continues to embrace dicamba technology despite problems with off-target movement.
Julius Schaaf grows corn and soybeans near Shenandoah.
“Two years ago we dinged about 60 acres of the neighbor’s beans, and it was a temperature inversion (not) drift. Maybe (we) sprayed just a little bit too late in the day and caught that inversion, and actually their beans were some of the best beans ever raised. They are good friends of mine.”
Schaaf says he went right to his neighbors when he realized what happened.
Last year, he altered his management plan to avoid off-target issues.
“We used the dicamba as a burn-down and then came back very early on the beans as a post, and of course we applied it by all the buffers and everything you had to (follow) and were very cautious of the wind and notifying people. We didn’t have a single instance of trouble with our neighbors.”
Schaaf tells Brownfield more of his neighbors are planting dicamba soybeans, and he says the herbicide has done a great job controlling resistant waterhemp.
The 2019 federal label for dicamba calls for wider buffers where there are endangered species and a shorter application window.
One article highlights diversifying with specialty crops, one article describes how to damage them. Sort of a curious combination. Dicamba is like cement. There’s cement that’s cracked and cement that’s waiting to crack. Russian roulette with your neighbors crops and natures sensitive crops seems pretty reckless and a bet you’re going to lose eventually.