It was the bumper crop that almost was. Late in the summer, farmers watched helplessly as ripe canola ready for swathing or swaths waiting for the combine were tossed around and blown into trees, shattering on to the ground bushel after bushel of seed. Some estimate that as much as 10 bushels an acre was scattered on the ground during the wind events. That’s more than double some farmers’ seeding rates!
While the sting of losing yield from the now infamous “billion dollar wind” is already more than farmers should have to bear, to add insult to injury the resulting shattering is and will create a gigantic volunteer problem for 2013 if not tackled promptly and properly. Robert Hornford, senior technical specialist of oilseed and pulse crops for BASF, outlines just how huge of a volunteer population farmers could be facing and what to do about it.
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