The Scoop Podcast: Weed Management Has a Thin Margin of Error
As a technical resource, Kyle Gustafson shares his role as Crop Protection Product Manager at Winfield United allows him to help with some of the most difficult weeds to management in row crop agriculture.
His geography covers the Dakotas, Montana and the Pacific Northwest. Before this role he was a regional agronomist in North Dakota and South Dakota for nine years.
“I love to learn about different areas and it's been really fun because I can take different ideas to another area and I can kind of incorporate that same idea somewhere else,” Gustafson says. “I can tell you the exact FFA trip I was on when I decided I wanted to be an agronomist. I remember we were coming home from a soil judging contest.”
Today, he says the biggest cluster of questions he helps with are around weed management. From kochia in the Dakotas to grasses in Pacific Northwest, Gustafson says the variety is a fun challenge to his role.
He says the way agriculture does business has changed, but a farmer’s nature hasn’t. And his focus is threading the needle of doing business in a better way while understanding the farmer’s decision-making process.
“A lot of the work starts right now. It's sitting down and making a plan, looking at the past season and saying what, what struggles did I have?” he says. “If it was a problem last year, there's a good chance it's going to be a problem again next year.”
The planning pays off in how you can elevate weed management success.
“80% weed control in the world of weed sciences is fair to good. 90 to 95% is very good to excellent. So we have a really slim margin of error. All those things that play into how do you get your herbicide to go from 80 to 90 or 95% it's a very fine margin of error, but it's an art and when you do it correctly,” he says. “That's how you see success as a retailer and as a farmer, and that's how you experience better weed control and just better pesticide performance.”
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