The fate of pesticides in soil

[Feldspar]

Or................................... listen to the Koreans and ditch the beer and fags and feed them to the slugs instead and get 68% control. Easily the most amusing paper I've found for a while.

http://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/ArticleFullRecord.jsp?cn=OOGCBV_2007_v46n2_325

and

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13580-012-0100-9.

I am actually going to work out if an alcohol + tobacco mix is economic as a foliar application.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Prompted by this thread: http://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/where-am-i-going-wrong.113898/#post-2351792, I think we need to seriously question the advantages of ferric phosphate over metaldehyde.

Copying:

This is a very interesting paper which actually finds that ferric phosphate is much more damaging to earthworms than metaldehyde:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092913930600031X.

Just ask yourself, what evidence have you seen personally that shows that ferric phosphate is any kinder to the soil biological environment. I haven't seen any.

Its kinder to water testing techniques

 

[Feldspar]

Its kinder to water testing techniques

Yes, that's why we do border spread with ferric phosphate.

 

[SilliamWhale]

Would like to know more about the relative toxicity of each to beetles and hedgehogs

 

[rob1]

hopefully the wee little beasties not killed by cultivation's will control slugs for free, the way things are going with chems I can see we will only be left with Ferric S before long in any case, the water companies really dont like Met

 

[Cutlerstom]

Beside the point of pesticides in soil, the fate of pesticides in general is worrying, I hope everyone has written a letter to Mep's regarding re registering glyphosate. If not, do it now! Letter template can be found for Nfu members here
http://www.nfuonline.com/news/latest-news/nfu-underlines-importance-of-glyphosate/

 

[Feldspar]

[QUOTE="Simon C, post: 1786374, member: 319]

So it seems to me that is almost inevitable that the short term cure for blackgrass is actually the long term cause.

Have always thought the cure for blackgrass is to let blackgrass grow uninterrupted for 3 years and let it heal the soil, fighting it is like fighting cancer, hope to kill first before healthy cells (ie crop)

SU herbicides are diabetic drugs ( Google sulfylureas and you'll find herbicides play second fiddle to big pharma)

Big pharma + Big Farmer = good business model for BASF BAYER DUPONT etc[/QUOTE]

Have been thinking about the idea recently of the effect of allowing black-grass to do what it so desperately desires, namely to go to seed. Is there any suggestion anywhere that allowing it to complete its life-cycle uninterrupted somehow has a positive effect on long term control?

 

[rob1]

Have always thought the cure for blackgrass is to let blackgrass grow uninterrupted for 3 years and let it heal the soil, fighting it is like fighting cancer, hope to kill first before healthy cells (ie crop)

SU herbicides are diabetic drugs ( Google sulfylureas and you'll find herbicides play second fiddle to big pharma)

Big pharma + Big Farmer = good business model for BASF BAYER DUPONT etc

Have been thinking about the idea recently of the effect of allowing black-grass to do what it so desperately desires, namely to go to seed. Is there any suggestion anywhere that allowing it to complete its life-cycle uninterrupted somehow has a positive effect on long term control?[/QUOTE]
Have noticed where we cut the haylage that has BG in it if we can do it when the BG is about halfway through flowering the seed is not yet viable but the BG seems to think it has achieved its aim and dies

 

[Feldspar]

@Simon C - just looking back through some papers with your thought about the effect of pesticides on BG.

This one, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0038071786900866, does show a dip in the fungi to bacteria ratio. I suppose one could theorise that this sudden change could in some way act as a signalling mechanism to the BG seed to wake up.

 

[bactosoil]

@fieldspar Its called quorum sensing

 

[Feldspar]

Have been thinking about the idea recently of the effect of allowing black-grass to do what it so desperately desires, namely to go to seed. Is there any suggestion anywhere that allowing it to complete its life-cycle uninterrupted somehow has a positive effect on long term control?

Have noticed where we cut the haylage that has BG in it if we can do it when the BG is about halfway through flowering the seed is not yet viable but the BG seems to think it has achieved its aim and dies[/QUOTE]

Some of the most stunning black-grass control that I have seen on our farm has been where we have fallowed a field and allowed the BG to very nearly set seed. In one case I mentioned at the beginning of this thread, we let it set seed in one year and then let all that shed seed grow the next year. That aside, we've got one field this year which was so bad for black-grass which we fallowed under ELS and then sprayed off at the end of May. It's in wheat this year and it's almost spotless.

 

[Feldspar]

@fieldspar Its called quorum sensing

I thought that might stimulate a response from you! I'll have a read about this 'quorum sensing'.

 

[Feldspar]

Also, possible signs of resistance emerging to flufenacet: http://pub.jki.bund.de/index.php/JKA/article/view/6141.

Actually, this would seem like old news: http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/20133016970.html;jsessionid=069080B7DD6D6D6D0A83268E1D9652D9.

 

[Feldspar]

@Simon C - just looking back through some papers with your thought about the effect of pesticides on BG.

This one, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0038071786900866, does show a dip in the fungi to bacteria ratio. I suppose one could theorise that this sudden change could in some way act as a signalling mechanism to the BG seed to wake up.

Boom: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369526604000743. Black-grass might listen for quorum signals from microbial populations to know when it's a good time to germinate. Interesting.

 

[bactosoil]

It has come a long way since that paper of 2004
biomanipulation will have a big part to play in the future

 

[Feldspar]

Just doing a bit of reading of Liz Stockdale's work, and this synopsis paper, Detection and quantification of the soil microbial biomass – impacts on the management of agricultural soils, had a nice few sentences on the topic of this thread:

The effects of soil micro-organisms on pesticides, i.e. in degrading them following application (e.g. Anderson 1984; Simon et al. 1992; Suzuki & Otani 2004), are often more significant than the direct impacts of pesticide use on microbial biodiversity (Johnsen et al. 2001): soil micro-organisms more often inhibit pesticides than vice-versa.​

 

[Feldspar]

Also, I am just revisiting the link that @martian put up on about page 4 which discussed toxic effects from glyphosate in the soil. I am just going through the Matt Hagny article to check the sources to reassess how reliable I think they are. To give an example, here's the first reference that he uses: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11104-010-0689-3, which on the very surface of things appears in a mainstream journal and appears to have been cited a good number of times.

Did anyone read that Matt Hagny article and change their farming practices as a result? IIRC, @Simon C said it was something that was an eye-opener to him. We have one field of cover crop to spray off, as well as some lightly cultivated stubbles which have greened up. I am keen to get the glyphosate on earlier rather than later now in an attempt to stay clear of any of these issues. What I need to check is, if there is a small amount of BG germination in the spring, whether a second glyphosate application onto nearly bare soil is likely to have a little or large effect.

 

[soilbug]

Wow, Feldspar - you hit a gold thread with this topic - haven't had time to read all, but great deal of sense coming from all over. My take is - arable soils = clapped out with little om% from avoiding livestock enterprise integration - everyone is tractor-arsed now, - so too lacking in soil biome (bugs!). Plus academia trains us to think 'big' - for big yields, big horsepower (coz the soil lacks om% and pans easily), big machinery, so = destructive tillage systems (power harrows etc) to kill the last few worms. etc and nobody likes us using farm saved seed (which is aclimatised to our environment - see potatoes!).

Result = little to no profit due to big costs, and roundup residues now in our bread; german beer and where else (as well as genetically resistant weeds). I am convinced of the 'empty callories' charge too from over-simple fertilisation where soil is now just a rooting medium for agronomists to sell us all the important inputs. Every field gets a x4wheel agronomist parked up fortnightly, telling us what he must sell us next and we just accept his gospel without question. No wonder we have killed the bugs which mineralise the soil to provide amino acid building blocks for nutritious crops.

When will colleges focus on big bottom lines (not kardashian ones - the stuff that makes for holidays) ?

Avoiding pre-combine desication reduces the spray residues I get to eat in my toast, whilst lifting the cutter bar to leave some crop residue, followed by a light cultivation rather than another total viet nam herbicide desication + swopping straw for real muck plus going 'min/no till' works wonders. Adding a simple rotation improves things but we must stop the agronomist walking off with the first (and only) profit cut.

So we need to get down on our knees and decide which weeds and then which herbicides to order; carry a little pocket spyglass and then order the right fungicide if we must. This is where Albrecht system growers score. Crops grown on well balanced soils are less susceptible to pests and diseases - so the biota survives better too, and more cash is saved!

Organic growers need to balance their soils too - add the trace elements and major ones via natural mineral applications. Compost is unlikely to do the business other than open up the soil and increase its water retentive capacity. Jaysus - I know - I sound like my father of a century ago! But we can learn a lot from those old guys if we switch off radio 'scream 'n shout' and have a little think when we reach the headland.

Too often I see an agronomist parked in every field gateway all year telling us what we must buy off him next - so crops are sprayed to hell and back = even more destruction of the biota. My soil, just to confirm there is more to my bulls**t than just a new year rant, has gone from 2% humus to 7 - 8 - 9 %; yields increasing and much more drought resistant. Animal fertility is also very good but that beer with the residual chemicals in it - probably explains why I'm such a contrarian. Don't worry though - we will soon be saved from german beer if brexit ever happens.
Cheers,
soilbug.

 

[Simon C]

Nice little experiment in Acres mag last month. Glyphosate promoting fusarium on soya bean roots.

 

[soilbug]

One picture says it all, until the rep comes round two months later to sell a fusarium spray.

No wonder Bayer wanted to take over Monsanto - good strategy for them. We have to reduce our dependency on roundup in order to keep the consumer on our side and before every weed develops glycophos tollerance.

Neal Kinsey (Albrecht disciple) says that if we get the soil chemistry right we can grow any crop, by which he means chemistry + good physical structure provides the right environment for the third factor - biology - to come right almost on its own. I believe this can be accelerated with fym/compost (to feed the bugs), and Dr Elaine Ingram would say..." add some 'tea' " when in leaf. I'm finding that building up organic matter also buffers against moisture deficit and greatly reduces plant stress; so reducing disease (and pest) vulnerability.

Has anyone seen a response from commercial pharmacists to those roundup slides ?

soilgrub