I was encouraged by @wakeupnd to write more posts on farming. So I’m starting this series to give you a look into the ways and life of today’s farmer. I hope you enjoy!
Spraying Practices
The Big Man currently grows wheat, soy beans, sunflowers, and sugar beets. There’s no set schedule on how or when each crop is sprayed; it’s all driven by weather and plant conditions. Some years they may spray more and some years less.
The Big Man is careful to only apply as much chemical that’s needed to get the job done. He does not apply too much(that would be a waste of money), nor too little(this can cause resistant weeds.)
Like I stated earlier, weather conditions play a big part in spraying. For example, wind directions and speeds are a big factor in when and where you can spray. Spray with the wrong direction, and you damage your neighbor’s field. That’ll cost you money in reimbursements. Spray when it’s too windy, and the chemical won’t even make it onto the plant.
Field Comparisons
There are fields not so far away, that have been scimply sprayed, and the timing was bad. If you had to guess which crop was planted in this field, what would you guess?
This is a wheat field. The wheat is the green, as it’s not ready for harvest yet, while the yellow is the weeds.
This is what a wheat field should look like.
Can you guess which crop was planted here?
These are both soybean fields.
Here is another soybean field for comparison.
The Big Man says soybeans here are a break-even crop, since conditions around here don’t produce enough yields for a profit. Why bother planting soybeans then? We need them for rotation purposes. (That’s a post for another day.) Looking at those fields above, the Big Man isn’t sure how the farmer can even afford to buy seed.
He’s also seen some farmers around the area try organic farming. Their fields looked even worse than that! Needless to say, they quit the organic route real quick.
That’s all I have for today on this topic. I hope you enjoyed a view in today’s farming!
I just read an article about Trump's trade war with China affecting soybean farmers.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/20/canada-could-take-market-share-after-canceled-chinese-contracts.html
Hopefully that doesn't screw the farmers overs to bad this year.
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If this agreement with the EU works out, it will be good for the farmers. (I wanted to say more but Big Man says wait until we hear more.)
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Yeah to early to tell how it's all going to work out but at least Trump is dealing with it now and getting some protections is place if there are no buyers of the crops.
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Howdy this fine Sunday @hebrewhousewife! This is such a great illustration of difference between spraying correctly and incorrectly and why. Beautiful teaching and illustrative photos! Is your land also totally flat like the photos? It looks table flat! Perfect for crop fields. great job!
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Hello there janton! Thank you, and yes the land is totally flat here! The only ditches around here are ones that farmers make to drain the fields. Perfect for crops!
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I love that when you can see for miles, it was that way on our farm in Kansas. Plus, in your location with all the snow in the wintertime it's good not to have big hills to make road conditions even worse.
I loved the post, it was gorgeous!
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It is good to hear that there is some thought around how much to spray and when to spray!
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Yes! Although I can’t speak for all farmers, we don’t do things just willy nilly! If you want to make money, you need to be efficient and take care of the land for future crops.
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I'm sure most farmers probably follow that practice...just guessing of course!
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Isn't Organic farming safer though ? A lot of spray can never be good for the products. Good post
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It depends on what kind of organic we’re talking about. If you mean USDA organic, well...that’s up for debate. If you mean completely natural, working with nature, then yes, I’d agree with you. If my husband doesn’t take proper precautions while working with chemical, he’ll come home with a nasty headache.
So why do we use chemicals? There are a lot of people in the world, most of whom would rather buy their food than grow it themselves. There are few farmers out there to provide a mass amount of food, so the farms have to be bigger. When your farm gets bigger, you simply can’t keep up by doing things all natural(and that wasn’t even all natural!) As you could see from the pictures above, there’s just no way you’d make any money without farming with modern technology and resources. Basically, supply is driven by demand. The only way things will change is if technology changes or people/consumers change.
Thank you for reading and commenting!
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I meant all natural, the pricing and the technology should be changed in a way that products can be all natural, this can be good for both the farmers and the consumers .
I agree to whatever points you have made, those are all valid, may be in future we can adopt procedures which can be more helpful for consumer's health and equally helpful for farmers and the market
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