Sorry but I am a worse typer and speller when I am PISSED
I have nearly two square miles (1,200 acers) of soybeans full of weeds after spending $35K on chemicals....and lots of work....
The saga begins with the preplant herbicide that did absoultly nothing. Pissin in the wind would do as much. $15/acer + $6 application as the local COOP applied it. Thing is they only put down 1/2 of recommended rate, some thing common to growers that use Round up ready soybeans. I do not plant them, I plant conventional non GMO varieties and they surely know this after 15 years... So the preplant didn't work and 450 acers of the post emergence herbicide didn't work either due to the pre plant herbicide failure. SO they F'd Up BIG TIME, with only 1/2 rate of pre and 450 acers of the wrong stuff for the situation. We sprayed the 450 acers not them...
So now we go back with the newly reccomended post emergence herbicide and start all over with it. The weeds are getting big by then with the early spring conditions we had. They reccomend splitting the grass herbicide from the broad leaf so we have to spray twice. We have done the first pass with the broad leaf herbicide. On the advice of one of the chemical reps we dug out the old row crop cultivator and spent a day moving the sweeps around for more trash clearance to get through the modern farming practice of leaving crop residue on the surface of the soil. Without the mods we did it would have been impossible for this machine to have gone through the fields with out plugging up and wrecking crops and leaving balls of dead plant material...As of today we've done 500 acers or so with a row crop cultivator, some thing unheard of for many years around here...
We still have 1,200 more to spray with the grass herbicide, about 5 days of work. I feel we will end up cultivating nealy all of them before we're through.
Mostly this is all due to the wrong amount of preplant. They can check, but in 30 years I have never ordered or applied 1/2 rate of anything on my farm. I just don't do that because I don't grow round up resistant crops. I don't have it to save my arse...like 99% of other farmers here.
So who should I go after and for what or how much? Last year the same out fit sprayed 3 out of 12 fields with the preplant and it rained and they never sprayed the other 9. So I had a hellova summer last summer to, due to their carelessness. Cost me money in chemicals and maybe some yeild reduction. This COOP is an $80 million gross business by the way...and I am a member with about $60K in stock...I want to keep my business there but I also want some compensation for their F' ups. It is not just materials either but some real time as cultivating is a slow process compared to spraying. But it still works well, as the steel doesn't care what kind of weed, or how many of them. I now "own" the center of the row, without chemicals...
I want to get along, but I feel I have good reason to bitch and perhaps get some compensation for THEIR mistakes on my fields..
What would you do?? What would be fair?
Right now I want to destroy somebody...
Regards, Kirk
I have nearly two square miles (1,200 acers) of soybeans full of weeds after spending $35K on chemicals....and lots of work....
The saga begins with the preplant herbicide that did absoultly nothing. Pissin in the wind would do as much. $15/acer + $6 application as the local COOP applied it. Thing is they only put down 1/2 of recommended rate, some thing common to growers that use Round up ready soybeans. I do not plant them, I plant conventional non GMO varieties and they surely know this after 15 years... So the preplant didn't work and 450 acers of the post emergence herbicide didn't work either due to the pre plant herbicide failure. SO they F'd Up BIG TIME, with only 1/2 rate of pre and 450 acers of the wrong stuff for the situation. We sprayed the 450 acers not them...
So now we go back with the newly reccomended post emergence herbicide and start all over with it. The weeds are getting big by then with the early spring conditions we had. They reccomend splitting the grass herbicide from the broad leaf so we have to spray twice. We have done the first pass with the broad leaf herbicide. On the advice of one of the chemical reps we dug out the old row crop cultivator and spent a day moving the sweeps around for more trash clearance to get through the modern farming practice of leaving crop residue on the surface of the soil. Without the mods we did it would have been impossible for this machine to have gone through the fields with out plugging up and wrecking crops and leaving balls of dead plant material...As of today we've done 500 acers or so with a row crop cultivator, some thing unheard of for many years around here...
We still have 1,200 more to spray with the grass herbicide, about 5 days of work. I feel we will end up cultivating nealy all of them before we're through.
Mostly this is all due to the wrong amount of preplant. They can check, but in 30 years I have never ordered or applied 1/2 rate of anything on my farm. I just don't do that because I don't grow round up resistant crops. I don't have it to save my arse...like 99% of other farmers here.
So who should I go after and for what or how much? Last year the same out fit sprayed 3 out of 12 fields with the preplant and it rained and they never sprayed the other 9. So I had a hellova summer last summer to, due to their carelessness. Cost me money in chemicals and maybe some yeild reduction. This COOP is an $80 million gross business by the way...and I am a member with about $60K in stock...I want to keep my business there but I also want some compensation for their F' ups. It is not just materials either but some real time as cultivating is a slow process compared to spraying. But it still works well, as the steel doesn't care what kind of weed, or how many of them. I now "own" the center of the row, without chemicals...
I want to get along, but I feel I have good reason to bitch and perhaps get some compensation for THEIR mistakes on my fields..
What would you do?? What would be fair?
Right now I want to destroy somebody...
Regards, Kirk
