Anyone bothering with sclerotinia sprays?

[DrWazzock]

Its a dilemma.

Its Saturday night, bank holiday weekend and as usual it is calm and dry and the wind is the right way to keep any spray away from a residential area. Tomorrow the wind direction is wrong and wind speed gradually picking up then showery weather wednesday onwards. So this evening is ideal opportunity for Sclerotinia spray - the usual divorce inducing timing of the spray programme.

Certainly not spraying for pollen beetle. Just sclerotinia.

How I wish I was organic.

Wheat is not quite at T1 but will be when the weather has broken down later next week - as usual.

 

[DrWazzock]

That's the first dose on. 0.5 litres amistar plus 2.5 kg Mg Boron Mn. (Micro top ?). I'll go back in 3 weeks.

It's patchy due to flea beetle onslaught in the autumn. You could whip a mouse through a third of it. Two thirds of it just about acceptable population. I'll be delighted with 25 cwt.

It's been one of those years. Ground between plants white with undissolved fertiliser, but the plants themselves look very healthy and have plenty of side shoots still to flower. Main stem podding up.

Semi dwarf "Sequel". Easy to get through with the sprayer.

 

[Feldspar]

Its a dilemma.

Its Saturday night, bank holiday weekend and as usual it is calm and dry and the wind is the right way to keep any spray away from a residential area. Tomorrow the wind direction is wrong and wind speed gradually picking up then showery weather wednesday onwards. So this evening is ideal opportunity for Sclerotinia spray - the usual divorce inducing timing of the spray programme.

Certainly not spraying for pollen beetle. Just sclerotinia.

How I wish I was organic.

Wheat is not quite at T1 but will be when the weather has broken down later next week - as usual.

Facing exactly this dilemma. Have been doing T1s today, but showery weather looking more likely now and very little spraying opportunities (well there are, but it means me doing it at night). Have winter barley T2 coming up, rest of wheat to do and 750ac of OSR of which 500ac is ready. As you say, wind now higher for Monday and Tuesday so might not be able to go in the middle of the day. I think I'm going to do our best and most foreward OSR at the next opportunity.

 

[Grass And Grain]

https://ahdb.org.uk/sclerotinia

Showing green/low risk for most of the UK, BUT I totally get the thought process re spraying capacity etc. as discussed above. Added to that, I understand that the fungicides are protectant, so timing is important.

Only the odd petal fallen in my crops, and the soil is very dry (which I think will reduce humidity in the canopy) so holding off for now and watch the weather forecast. I'm in the dry east.

Another BUT. My agronomist is recommending a boscalid + metconazole product which has growth reg properties. Full rate of like products have given a plus 0.4t/ha yield benefit in HGCA trials in low disease years (half rate application has not shown any/much yield benefit) on fertile sites.

My crop looks well at the moment, but I can't help but think that comtinued drought is going to do a bit of growth regulation for me.

Either way, it's not going to either make or break me. Still holding off for now.

 

[ZXR17]

Sprayed mine last week , we had three damp days last week and heavy dews most nights , the crop has reasonable potential so am prepared to look after it .
We have also added Generic Amistar this year to try and hold on to green leaf .

 

[Two Tone]

Had a call from my grain buyer on Thursday. We talked about the value of various crops, OSR especially. The trade still don’t seem to have realised how hard hit the yields are going to be this year or that considerably less will be planted for next year.
One of the best growers I know around here is @cotswold farmer 1977. I chatted with him last night and even he says he won’t plant his usual acreage for next year.

With regards if and what members are spraying on Rape or cereals, it is very obvious to me that certain companies and Agronomists are far worse at recommending products that not only a not necessary but damaging to all our futures, than others. As soon as I read a Maverick recommendation with the Sclerotinia spray, I know exactly who that supplier is.

Shame on them! You may have recovered from your less profitable position. But continuing to promote unnecessary products like these just to keep your sales figures up is an utter disgrace!
Also trying to fool us in thinking how clever you are by using 6 products in a tank mix when only 3 at most are needed is going to fool us anymore!

Which Company am I referring to?

 

[Two Tone]

This thread has pee'd me off. You shouldn’t be allowed to call yourself a farmer if you have no knowledge of what you are applying and are just slinging ‘a bit’ of everything thing on that a chemical salesman has told you to.
Those of you on serviced deals, do you actually benchmark it against people doing it other ways?

I agree, IMO if you take little interest in what your Agronomist is doing for you then you deserve to have your leg lifted.

Mine and I enter a Syngenta Fungicide challenge competition each year. We do things outside of the box to see what effect they have ahead of any product bans. For example this year we are using CTL alternatives. We have won this competition more times than any other team.

At last year’s prize giving, one Agronomist said that most of his customers weren’t in the slightest bit interested in what he did or how much he spent, as long as he achieved a decent yield the farm owner’s could brag about!

WTF!

 

[B'o'B]

As I gather the China Canada trade war is weighing against the rape market. When the biggest canola producer and the biggest canola/rape importer fall out and the biggest user reduces use the producer needs to find a new market.

 

[ajd132]

I agree, IMO if you take little interest in what your Agronomist is doing for you then you deserve to have your leg lifted.

Mine and I enter a Syngenta Fungicide challenge competition each year. We do things outside of the box to see what effect they have ahead of any product bans. For example this year we are using CTL alternatives. We have won this competition more times than any other team.

At last year’s prize giving, one Agronomist said that most of his customers weren’t in the slightest bit interested in what he did or how much he spent, as long as he achieved a decent yield the farm owner’s could brag about!

WTF!

Maybe this brexit malarkey will give this whole industry the shake up it so desperately needs.
If you don’t take an interest in the agronomy you are just an operator doing what someone else tells you.

 

[Clive]

I agree, IMO if you take little interest in what your Agronomist is doing for you then you deserve to have your leg lifted.

Mine and I enter a Syngenta Fungicide challenge competition each year. We do things outside of the box to see what effect they have ahead of any product bans. For example this year we are using CTL alternatives. We have won this competition more times than any other team.

At last year’s prize giving, one Agronomist said that most of his customers weren’t in the slightest bit interested in what he did or how much he spent, as long as he achieved a decent yield the farm owner’s could brag about!

WTF!

How is the competition decided ? MOIC or yield etc ?

 

[Two Tone]

How is the competition decided ? MOIC or yield etc ?

Margin over Fungicide costs. Usually, it’s not won by the highest yield but the 2nd highest yield.

What it has consistently proved is that on average, fungicides are the least most cost effective products we put in our sprayer tanks. But of course, when we get a high disease year, they pay handsomely and the HGCA default program wins. That is a lot rarer than most think here. I’d place this part of the world as medium risk for Septoria.

Clever of Syngenta to create such competitions to keep us all talking and frightened enough to invest in these products. They ain’t daft!

They used to try to always make us use high disease risk varieties to try to prove their point. We overruled them. It can also be very influenced by the grain sale price used.

2 years ago, our program had no triazoles in it. We won. To prove the point we repeated the program last year and came 3rd.

Interestingly we wanted to use Elatus without the Prothio at T1 and T2, but we’re not allowed to because you can’t use it twice. So we used Imtrex at T1, The team that won did so by using different label brands of Elatus At T1 and T2. In effect they did what we wanted to do, but legally! But of course they did include Triazoles on both applications.
However, we think that if we or they hadn’t, the margin would have been even higher!

 

[Renaultman]

Just to play devil's advocate here, I'm going to stick up for the serviced sector here.

You have to submit accounts every year, so why aren't you a chartered accountant? How often are you signing legal documents? How about some basic legal training? You get the idea. My point is that not every grower has the interest or time in keeping up to date on all the agrochemical data, legislation etc available, so they choose to outsource a critical component to the success of the business to a professional who is dedicated to this specialist subject.

There's a middle ground here & IMO serviced growers ought to be checking up on their level of service. Those who never question the bills or at least have someone WITHOUT A VESTED INTEREST have a look occasionally will get little sympathy from me.

As I've said before, there some very good service agronomists out there who work hard for the customers/clients. It's a few bad ones who give the rest of the industry a bad name. I do have sympathy with those that have serviced agronomy who dare to put their head above the parapet only to be shot at by the illuminati of BASIS trained TFF members. Myself included.

I have gone from independent, to serviced but hope to go to to self in the future. On my own land I question a lot and if I'm not happy I don't do it. On contract land I still question but as the contractor the final decision isn't mine. Can't fault my serviced agronomist as it's my brother in law's company.

 

[Renaultman]

Its a dilemma.

Its Saturday night, bank holiday weekend and as usual it is calm and dry and the wind is the right way to keep any spray away from a residential area. Tomorrow the wind direction is wrong and wind speed gradually picking up then showery weather wednesday onwards. So this evening is ideal opportunity for Sclerotinia spray - the usual divorce inducing timing of the spray programme.

Certainly not spraying for pollen beetle. Just sclerotinia.

How I wish I was organic.

Wheat is not quite at T1 but will be when the weather has broken down later next week - as usual.

Same here for the wheat, still can't decide on Sclerotinia the forecast rain keeps slipping away. As long as the frost didn't do too much damage, the crop looks too good to take a lot of chances. Hopefully enough flowers on it to keep the pollen beetle happy

 

[Brisel]

Margin over Fungicide costs. Usually, it’s not won by the highest yield but the 2nd highest yield.

What it has consistently proved is that on average, fungicides are the least most cost effective products we put in our sprayer tanks. But of course, when we get a high disease year, they pay handsomely and the HGCA default program wins. That is a lot rarer than most think here. I’d place this part of the world as medium risk for Septoria.

Clever of Syngenta to create such competitions to keep us all talking and frightened enough to invest in these products. They ain’t daft!

They used to try to always make us use high disease risk varieties to try to prove their point. We overruled them. It can also be very influenced by the grain sale price used.

2 years ago, our program had no triazoles in it. We won. To prove the point we repeated the program last year and came 3rd.

Interestingly we wanted to use Elatus without the Prothio at T1 and T2, but we’re not allowed to because you can’t use it twice. So we used Imtrex at T1, The team that won did so by using different label brands of Elatus At T1 and T2. In effect they did what we wanted to do, but legally! But of course they did include Triazoles on both applications.
However, we think that if we or they hadn’t, the margin would have been even higher!

I'm in a team with @ZXR17 We've won it 3 times by spending the most! This year we've tried a non CTL based programme but used mancozeb instead. It's a Syngenta mancozeb so we're hoping it will work out...

 

[Two Tone]

I'm in a team with @ZXR17 We've won it 3 times by spending the most! This year we've tried a non CTL based programme but used mancozeb instead. It's a Syngenta mancozeb so we're hoping it will work out...

Not surprised you won it by spending the most in your area where Septoria must be higher risk than here.
We too are using Mancozeb instead of CTL this year. Elatus plus at T1, Velogy plus at T2. T0 and T3 are Armistar. All have a litre of Mancozeb with each treatment.

 

[Chalky]

After all the 'holy than thou' prognostications in this thread about spending on what you see-how do you have your programmed masterplan road-mapped before you have even met the growth stages and criticise 'agronomists' ??

 

[Two Tone]

After all the 'holy than thou' prognostications in this thread about spending on what you see-how do you have your programmed masterplan road-mapped before you have even met the growth stages and criticise 'agronomists' ??

Good point, but not quite.

We have to chose a program of products, but can change the rate or cancel ingredients or it completely if we feel it isn’t needed.

Where it comes in so useful is where we can compare what we are doing on our own farms or try out something completely out of the box to see how it compares with other tried and tested programs.

My team is my Agronomist and me. Most of the other teams are other farmers/managers and their Agronomist. Some are Agronomists on their own.

It was one of these that mentioned that many of his customers don’t care what or how much he spends, as long as they can brag to their neighbours that they got a good yield. Both he and we felt rather sad about the situation because his true talents weren’t being appreciated.

It amazes us all what can be learned from the competition, which does result in what we do the following year on our own farms.

However, there are Agronomist that are far too sales lead or cover their arses by applying stuff that really isn’t needed. Both service and independent Agronomists. Mainly because they have so many acres to cover that they simply haven’t got time to do the job properly.

Only by the farmer showing an interest and questioning decisions can he be confident that the job is being done properly. On the whole, any Agronomist worth his salt would actually appreciate that the farmer is interested in what he is doing. If one was to have any other attitude than this, then he wouldn’t be my Agronomist for long.

 

[Chae1]

exactly no where have i said i'm a qualified agronomist, nor do i pay his bills, if i'm given a job sheet and a pile of chemicals i will put them on, i just commented that there was a LOT of beetles on our rape when we looked at the field for a different reason (not even spray related) and said is there a point where they do more harm than good and the agronomist will be looking at the fields next week, he does a good job and doesn't push too much product if it's not needed

Do you have a farm manager, who makes decisions what/when to spray?

 

[Bobthebuilder]

Do you have a farm manager, who makes decisions what/when to spray?

boss, agronomist and me

 

[Brisel]

Something I've yet to see in TFF is a member state what their brief to the agronomist was;

1. Low risk. Better to keep the rates up, reduce the risk of resistance and prevent a weed problem becoming established
2. 1 but pushing the boundaries further
3. Lowest reasonable cost & happy to accept a risk of poorer control occasionally

Who actually has this conversation with their agronomist??