Baseball and Weed Control Demand Similar Strategies

Mike Rankin
Crops and Soils Agent
University of Wisconsin - Extension

            I love this time of year.  Temperatures warm, the grass begins to green, and my attentions turn from meeting rooms and inferior sports like football and basketball to farm fields and baseball.  I embrace the latter for several reasons.  No sport offers the fan such a rich and colorful history.  The game simply reeks of numbers and statistics.  I marvel at the ability of a human who can take a 36-ounce piece of ash and hit a 2.9-inch sphere traveling at 95 miles per hour into the centerfield bleachers. 

Relaxation tapes do nothing for me.  Rather, just give me an AM radio with the banter of Bob Uecker and Jim Powell.  Finally, there is the strategy of the game.  You've got to love the strategy.  Do you hit and run?  Do you walk the next guy to get to the pitcher?  When do you bring in a reliever?  How should the infield play with a man on third, down by a run, and one out?  Do I eat another hot dog or not?  Employing good strategy is the difference between winning and losing baseball games.

Like baseball, farming involves a lot of strategy.  Let's address the issue of weed control and more specifically, herbicide selection.  In the same way that a pitcher has several options of the type and speed of the pitches he will throw with each batter, a farmer has several options of the type of herbicide that will be used for each field.  No pitcher is successful by using only one pitch.  If a batter strikes out on three fastballs in his first time to the plate, he's going to make an adjustment and be looking for a fastball his next time at bat.  If the pitcher obliges, chances are good that the ball will be hit and hit well.  No longer does the batter need to guess or make adjustments. 

The same scenario also applies to herbicide selection.  You may be successful using the same herbicide (or different herbicides with the same mode of action) for several years, but eventually Mother Nature is going to make an adjustment.  One or more of several scenarios may develop.  First, if the particular herbicide is weak on specific weed species, that species will soon proliferate and dominate the weed spectrum.  This is the primary reason why we now see more crabgrass in corn and black nightshade in soybeans when not too many years ago these weeds were essentially non-existent in the area.

The other and perhaps more devastating shift that occurs with a "one pitch" herbicide strategy is the development of herbicide resistant weeds.  Herbicide resistance involves a shift in weed biotypes within a particular species.  A biotype is an individual within a species that has characteristics not common to the population as a whole.  In this case, the unique characteristic is resistance to the herbicide mode of action that is repeatedly used.  Over a period of five or six years, the minority population (the resistant weed) erupts into a majority population.  We are beyond the point of simply talking about theory.  Already in the county are confirmed cases of ALS-resistant giant foxtail and in the state, confirmed cases of ALS-resistant black nightshade.

When resistance occurs to a widely available herbicide family, herbicide options are drastically reduced.  Yes, there is Roundup Ready technology, but repeated use of this herbicide will also result in species shifts and ultimately resistance.  Clearly, the best strategy is to avoid the problem.

At a conference I attended this past January, Dr. Gordon Harvey, UW-Madison weed scientist and respected worldwide for his opinions and research, suggested that the only effective strategy to beat the problem of weed species shifts and herbicide resistance is to initiate a strategy of a four to five-year herbicide mode of action rotation program.  I'm not sure that this is practical or possible but it does underscore the importance of the problem.

Finally, successful pitchers use every edge they can to get the hitter to make an out.  They do this by changing speeds on the same type of pitch, changing location, or in the case of the crafty veteran Gaylord Perry, add a little K-Y Jelly to the ball.  Similarly, proper herbicide selection needs to be complimented with practices such as crop rotation and mechanical weed control.  They not only enhance weed control effectiveness in any given year, but will also help delay the development of shifting weed species and resistance.

If you have a field(s) in a situation where the same herbicide or herbicides with the same mode of action have been applied for four or five years, take time to sit down with your ag chemical dealer and explore some different herbicide options for 2001.  This will be time well spent and help ensure a long time arsenal of effective herbicide pitches.  Play ball!