Follow the label when using Forefront T

Follow the label when using Forefront T

Farmers using Forefront T to control perennial weeds such as docks, thistles, ragwort and nettles to turn infested pasture back into productive grassland, must remember treatment comes with certain obligations.

“Forefront T must only be used in fields that are grazed by cattle or sheep and must not be used on grass that will be cut for hay or silage,’ explains Dr Nicola Perry, weed biology specialist for Corteva Agriscience.

“This is because the herbicide needs to be broken down by soil microbes, which readily happens when it passes out of an animal in its manure when grazing. If used in error on a crop that is later cut and conserved, the manure coming from the animals that eat it, collected in yards or stables, is less likely to meet these soil microbes, meaning the herbicide can still have some residual activity. If the manure is then applied back to fields or gardens, trace residues can have an impact on sensitive crops such as beans, potatoes and tomatoes. However, manure can be safely applied to fields growing grass, maize or cereals.

“It is really important that farmers read the label and adhere to the restrictions. A pictogram acts as a reminder on the product cap. Forefront T also needs the recommendation of a BASIS qualified adviser before it can be applied.”

If hay or silage is inadvertently made from grass treated with Forefront T, this must stay on the farm of origin and any resulting manure only applied back to grazing fields. It must never be sold to feed horses as their manure often makes its way to gardens and allotments where susceptible crops might be affected.

Forefront T offers the best long-term control of high populations of difficult grassland weeds. A single, well-timed application can control weeds for up to 18 months.

You can read this update from Corteva on TFF's AGVendor...

 

[BPip]

With large and small scale food crop producers worldwide struggling with aminopyralid contaminated manure and compost, and losing crops annually, destroying their income, it’s a fact that sporadic messages on forums or pictograms on the products are NOT working as adequate warning to farmers.

When sourcing forage not a single forage farmer has told me what herbicide is used on the crop. When asked, im told ‘its good, its clean’.

Forage products using these herbicides are STILL making their way off farm and causing havoc with food production crops and costing millions globally in lost income.

Normally when people want to avail of potentially life-threatening practices like drive a car, or own a gun, they have to be trained and gain a licence.
Yet with herbicides, they’re sold off the shelf to anyone, the labels are not read, and chaos ensues.
It’s life-threatening because if my crops fail, i make no income, despite having worked hard to produce good crops. Without my income i have no money to pay for my housing and basic life costs.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to work full time hours all year and have nothing at the end of it? To see months of work planted out to be twisting and distorting before your very eyes because this invisible demon compound has unknowingly made its way into your composted fertiliser?

At least produce these compounds to be bright yellow or glow in the dark, so it can at least be visually detected. However at this point of saturating billions of acres with the stuff for decades, if it did glow in the dark the entire earth would be pictured from space glowing like a lightbulb.
That’s quite a legacy to leave on earth - all in the name of ‘advancing agricultural production’ (while inhibiting it within some sectors at the same time )

Soil microbes are the ONLY thing capable of breaking these compounds down. But it has to be tilled into the soil to enable more microbes to break it down, and even then can take up to 2 yrs to be safe to plant into.
The surface of soil is not adequate.
Rain, composting heat, solar UV do not degrade these products.
Rain run-off into waterways is the likely end-destination for much foliar sprayed material. Waterways contamination of all agri-chemicals is very high.

The sprayed material itself is distributed to various agricultural practices, often in ignorance of its unsuitability of its end use.

I have horse manure heaps over 7yrs old that are fully composted and STILL the herbicide compounds are active, as per tests done last year.

I re-seeded grassland with mixed grasses in spring for hay last year, perfect conditions, soil ph, reputable seed quality etc, and i applied tonnes of herbicide contaminated well rotted years old horse manure, (thinking its at least ok for grassland, thats one way to get rid of it) the manure was like crumbly loam soil, looked perfect, lovely fertiliser!
The grass never matured, never headed. I didnt graze it or cut it at all, just waited for it to grow to cut for hay, and it never developed. I had tilled the soil previous to sowing, so there would have been some of the original grass roots re-grown, and even they didn’t head. It all germinated brilliantly, and weather last year was great, sporadic rains just before topsoil dries too much.
Not a single blade of hay was made.
Where i had scattered some seed to fill in bare patches elsewhere, that didnt receive manure, that headed.
So i am left to consider that the hormone destroying chemical aminopyralid, destroys the hormone system in infantile, fresh sown, non-mature grass to the point it doesnt produce a seed head.
Or, i may have several active herbicides mixed into my well rotten manure, as i have sourced forage from various farms, and it’s the combination of herbicides that impedes the grass from maturing to seed-head stage.

Hence why Forefront T is recommended for grazing land only. Its a combo of herbicides designed to kill all weeds, but the combo potentially makes it deadly for grass to produce its own seed, hence why its for grazing land only, where we’re not interested in the grass heading.
Instead there’s no transparency about this.

So now i potentially have a herbicide mix in my stock of fertiliser, that’s unsuitable for anything except grazing land.

The irony is i have these animals for their exceedingly good dung fertiliser, but the herbicide forage i feed them means i cant use their manure for my intended crop land!
Organic forage is few and far between near me, so i now import from eastern europe all my forage needs that is guaranteed without herbicides and not mouldy.....its pure madness! Its that or 700 pounds sterling per tonne for uk organic symbol forage. Stupid prices. Its just grass!


These products need to be heavily licensed, and complete transparency of farmers to legally have to declare which herbicide has been used on the crops for sale. That is the ONLY way all sectors in the agricultural industry can safely navigate where to source feeds and materials from.
I would happily oblige such standards if i knew it was useful info and important for other farmers in another sector within the industry.
I can use some herbicides on food crops, but many of the modern ones i can’t. Without declaration by farmers truthfully declaring whats been used, i am groping around in the dark and importing organic from hundreds of miles away, instead of supporting my local farmers.

It’s evident that the current practices and regulations are not working.
This is serious. There’s an alarming rate of contamination happening globally, and many livelihoods suffering immense losses.

 

[Cowmansam]

Have to got any figures to match that statement

 

[BPip]

To follow up, a study was undertaken by the USA Vermont agency of Agriculture to confirm contamination effects from herbicide residues and the amount required to cause harm to subsequent crops via manure/dung/compost use.
There have even been market garden farmers who’ve used ‘gaden centre’ bagged compost and discovered contamination. Many of these bagged products come from composted household ‘green’ waste, with some home herbicides not suitable for food production plants)

Interesting to note the amount required to destroy subsequent crops are in parts per billion. So a very miniscule amount. Of course all manure ideally is composted so the forage based manure becomes a concentrated source of these herbicides.
(I’ve even mulched potatoes with hay and within the week the potatoes twisted, went yellow and died. So manure is concentrated hay and the effects are just as quick to destroy plants)

NACAA

www.nacaa.com

Table 3. Range of herbicide residue detected in submitted samples, amount necessary in compost to cause plant injury and label and use information of four persistent herbicidesa.

Criteria	Picloram	Clopyralid	Aminopyralid	Aminocyclopyrachlor
Range detectedb at Testing Facility C	Trace ppb	Trace - 623 ppb	Trace - 6.4 ppb	0 ppb
Levels Known to Cause Harm in Compostb	5 ppb	10 ppb	1 ppb	Unknown
Tolerance on Hayc	400,000 ppb	500,000 ppb	50,000 ppb	No food uses
Registered for use in VT	yes	yes	yes	no
Pounds used in Vermont in 2012	0.0	19.71	16.43	0.0

aProducts are labeled as restricted use in Vermont.

bData gathered from VT-AG records.

cTolerance numbers published in General Register Code of Federal Regulations referring to allowable residue on a crop.

 

[davidroberts30]

I dont know what you have in your compost but as far as I'm aware forefront T is very safe to grasses ,deadly to anything broad leaf
Did you test your compost for all compounds?
How did you reseed?

 

[BPip]

Have to got any figures to match that statement

Hi cowmansam,

Official figures from agricultural ‘profits’ are logged by each countries agriculture sector, with the information coming from tax filings from farmers annually.
The losses sustained in the industry are not verifiably known.
I have never been asked to declare losses on my income paperwork, only costs and profits. So the losses become unknown, and the causes of losses in the agri industry are multiple as we know. Bad weather, pest issues, etc etc.
I personally have incurred 250k in losses throughout the years due to contamination, and i am by no means a large acreage farmer.
I’ve googled the issues to research and discover many others who’ve taken the time to write about it, while considering many more don’t write about it online.
If i knew where to report it, i would.
The producers of herbicides state on their labels strict use, but on the whole many farmers dont realise how serious the label advice is.
Old style herbicides are completely different to the power of the new-classes of herbicides. So many use them with the same abandon as older herbicides...not realising the concequences for other agri-sectors using their own manure.

Dow has compensated farmers losses due to these issues, yet the revised label warnings since compensation claims protect them legally from being sued, so that leaves farmers suing other farmers for losses due to non-declaration of herbicide useage?! That’s not a solution.

 

[BPip]

I dont know what you have in your compost but as far as I'm aware forefront T is very safe to grasses ,deadly to anything broad leaf
Did you test your compost for all compounds?
How did you reseed?

My fertiliser is horse manure fed 95% mixed grass off-farm produced hay forage and some beet pulp, and the bedding is miscanthus.
My tests have been on all food crops, tomatoes, potatoes, squashes, peas, beans etc - they’ve all suffered twisting, distorted leaves, slow growth, odd shaped fruiting when it occurred, and very low yield if the plants survived yielding.

With the re-seeding grass land last march i used the same fertiliser as above, tilled top 6 inches of virgin organic land of scalped cut old meadow grasses, very heavy seed broadcast of 20kg per acre, then rolled, it all germinated brilliantly, when it got to around 3 inches tall, i spread the fertliser, well rotten horse manure of many yrs, looked like loam soil. Grass grew more, very lush, but by september no heading....end of october nothing headed and it started turning yellow when the cold hit. Soil ph perfect of averaging 6.5 and weather was perfect for it. Quite curious to see if it heads this year! i wont be using the manure. Never known such a thing as no heading grass year 1.

 

[davidroberts30]

Did you test the compost for residual chemicals?

 

[BPip]

Did you test the compost for residual chemicals?

Hi david,

specifically which residual chemicals are you referring to?

Out of interest, have you used Forefront on grassland that you left to seedhead that year or just for perpetual grazing land?

 

[davidroberts30]

Hi david,

specifically which residual chemicals are you referring to?

Out of interest, have you used Forefront on grassland that you left to seedhead that year or just for perpetual grazing land?

Your on about forefront did you test for that?

Yes I have used forefront but it's the last resort chemical to use to clean a field here due to the cost
I will try something else first
I've only used it on cattle grazing ground

 

[milkloss]

Have used forefront when it was a more realistic price. Excellent chemical and it never affected our grasses in any noticeable way which at the time were grazing, hay and headed grass for silage. MCPA as an example is cheap and cheerful but is very hard on grass and not too effective on weeds in grass unlike animopyralid.

This is before banning the use on forage for conservation. All dung stayed on farm.

It’s a shame aminopyralid has become so expensive as one application is very effective on weeds that would otherwise need multiple chemicals, possibly with multiple applications to achieve effective control.

 

[Corteva Technical]

With large and small scale food crop producers worldwide struggling with aminopyralid contaminated manure and compost, and losing crops annually, destroying their income, it’s a fact that sporadic messages on forums or pictograms on the products are NOT working as adequate warning to farmers.

When sourcing forage not a single forage farmer has told me what herbicide is used on the crop. When asked, im told ‘its good, its clean’.

Forage products using these herbicides are STILL making their way off farm and causing havoc with food production crops and costing millions globally in lost income.

Normally when people want to avail of potentially life-threatening practices like drive a car, or own a gun, they have to be trained and gain a licence.
Yet with herbicides, they’re sold off the shelf to anyone, the labels are not read, and chaos ensues.
It’s life-threatening because if my crops fail, i make no income, despite having worked hard to produce good crops. Without my income i have no money to pay for my housing and basic life costs.
Do you have any idea what it’s like to work full time hours all year and have nothing at the end of it? To see months of work planted out to be twisting and distorting before your very eyes because this invisible demon compound has unknowingly made its way into your composted fertiliser?

At least produce these compounds to be bright yellow or glow in the dark, so it can at least be visually detected. However at this point of saturating billions of acres with the stuff for decades, if it did glow in the dark the entire earth would be pictured from space glowing like a lightbulb.
That’s quite a legacy to leave on earth - all in the name of ‘advancing agricultural production’ (while inhibiting it within some sectors at the same time )

Soil microbes are the ONLY thing capable of breaking these compounds down. But it has to be tilled into the soil to enable more microbes to break it down, and even then can take up to 2 yrs to be safe to plant into.
The surface of soil is not adequate.
Rain, composting heat, solar UV do not degrade these products.
Rain run-off into waterways is the likely end-destination for much foliar sprayed material. Waterways contamination of all agri-chemicals is very high.

The sprayed material itself is distributed to various agricultural practices, often in ignorance of its unsuitability of its end use.

I have horse manure heaps over 7yrs old that are fully composted and STILL the herbicide compounds are active, as per tests done last year.

I re-seeded grassland with mixed grasses in spring for hay last year, perfect conditions, soil ph, reputable seed quality etc, and i applied tonnes of herbicide contaminated well rotted years old horse manure, (thinking its at least ok for grassland, thats one way to get rid of it) the manure was like crumbly loam soil, looked perfect, lovely fertiliser!
The grass never matured, never headed. I didnt graze it or cut it at all, just waited for it to grow to cut for hay, and it never developed. I had tilled the soil previous to sowing, so there would have been some of the original grass roots re-grown, and even they didn’t head. It all germinated brilliantly, and weather last year was great, sporadic rains just before topsoil dries too much.
Not a single blade of hay was made.
Where i had scattered some seed to fill in bare patches elsewhere, that didnt receive manure, that headed.
So i am left to consider that the hormone destroying chemical aminopyralid, destroys the hormone system in infantile, fresh sown, non-mature grass to the point it doesnt produce a seed head.
Or, i may have several active herbicides mixed into my well rotten manure, as i have sourced forage from various farms, and it’s the combination of herbicides that impedes the grass from maturing to seed-head stage.

Hence why Forefront T is recommended for grazing land only. Its a combo of herbicides designed to kill all weeds, but the combo potentially makes it deadly for grass to produce its own seed, hence why its for grazing land only, where we’re not interested in the grass heading.
Instead there’s no transparency about this.

So now i potentially have a herbicide mix in my stock of fertiliser, that’s unsuitable for anything except grazing land.

The irony is i have these animals for their exceedingly good dung fertiliser, but the herbicide forage i feed them means i cant use their manure for my intended crop land!
Organic forage is few and far between near me, so i now import from eastern europe all my forage needs that is guaranteed without herbicides and not mouldy.....its pure madness! Its that or 700 pounds sterling per tonne for uk organic symbol forage. Stupid prices. Its just grass!


These products need to be heavily licensed, and complete transparency of farmers to legally have to declare which herbicide has been used on the crops for sale. That is the ONLY way all sectors in the agricultural industry can safely navigate where to source feeds and materials from.
I would happily oblige such standards if i knew it was useful info and important for other farmers in another sector within the industry.
I can use some herbicides on food crops, but many of the modern ones i can’t. Without declaration by farmers truthfully declaring whats been used, i am groping around in the dark and importing organic from hundreds of miles away, instead of supporting my local farmers.

It’s evident that the current practices and regulations are not working.
This is serious. There’s an alarming rate of contamination happening globally, and many livelihoods suffering immense losses.

We are sorry to hear that you may have had a problem resulting from the alleged contamination of manure from aminopyralid. We would encourage you to contact us on the technical hotline at Corteva Agriscience on 0800 689 8899 or [email protected] with the details so that we can investigate the matter.

 

[Bogweevil]

Read the label as per conditions of approval:

(9) The product must not be used on land where
vegetation will be cut for animal feed, fodder or
bedding nor for composting or mulching within one
calendar year of treatment.
(10) Manure from animals grazed on ‘Forefront Pro’
treated grassland should not leave the farm.
Manure from animals fed silage, hay or haylage
produced from grassland treated in the previous
calendar year should not leave the farm. This
manure should only be spread onto agricultural
grassland.
(11) Do not use between 31st July and 1st March.
(12)

Product MAPP No​	Extent of Authorisation​	Product Expiry Date (notes)​	Marketing Company​	Crop(s) (may have different Expiry Dates) see notice​	Active(s)​
Forefront Pro 19177​	GB and NI​	04/06/2024​	Dow AgroSciences Limited​	grassland​	aminopyralid and fluroxypyr​
Forefront T 15568​	​	31/10/2022​	Dow AgroSciences Limited​	grassland​	aminopyralid and triclopyr​
Halcyon 18561​	​	04/06/2024​	Dow AgroSciences Limited​	grassland​	aminopyralid and fluroxypyr​
Pro-Banish 18339​	​	04/06/2024​	Dow AgroSciences Limited​	grassland​	aminopyralid​

Otherwise use a clopyralid product - somewhat less persistent.

 

[deleted user 837354]

Clopyralid doesn't have the same spectrum as aminopyralid.

There is no cure all, and even forefront T will not control everything.

Never had any issues with forefront residues, follow the directions on the can. All manure retained to be used on existing holding etc. No problem.

 

[Bogweevil]

Clopyralid doesn't have the same spectrum as aminopyralid.

There is no cure all, and even forefront T will not control everything.

Never had any issues with forefront residues, follow the directions on the can. All manure retained to be used on existing holding etc. No problem.

Problems usually arise off farm when forage from treated fields is sold to stables, stable manure ends up in gardens, severe damage follows and Corteva get it in the neck.

The USP of aminopyralid is its persistence, it so tightly bound to the lignin in forage or bedding that it passes through the beasts into the manure unchanged. It is only broken down incorporated in the soil. It does not degrade in the muck heap even if stacked for over a year.

Its persistence is good from the environmental viewpoint - it seldom ends up in rivers or streams

It is disappointing that the strict stewardship has not prevented accidents.