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Amy Beth Dowdy
ABD Crop Consulting LLC
Dexter, Missouri
When I was born, I was the only girl in a nursery full of boys. It’s been that way my entire life, but I am comfortable in that environment and blaze my own trail. As a small child, I sat in the front yard and cried to go to the field with Daddy, who called me his little dirt dauber. When he did take me with him, I remember drinking out of the irrigation pipe and playing in the mud. I started “farming” at a very young age. In 1990, I started scouting rice in college and opened my own consulting business in 1996.
In 2021, we had a good planting window. Then it kept raining, which caused some hiccups. The pre-emergence herbicides were activated by all the rain, but wet conditions caused problems getting out the preflood herbicides and preflood fertilizer, leading to some delays on our zero grade fields. We had to replant 250 acres of rice due to poor stands in zero grade fields. After a less than ideal start, we were blessed with one of the highest yielding rice crops we have ever had.
Loyant® Herbicide Takes Out Pigweed In Row Rice
In Missouri, we fight pigweed in row rice and are starting to have problems with crab grass. If we are watchful and timely, we can control pigweed if we overlay pre-emergence herbicides and then apply Loyant herbicide right before the rice canopies. Loyant does a good job on pigweeds.
We have a new species of barnyardgrass that is resistant to Facet and propanil. It’s not a widespread area, but we are having some issues trying to get a handle on it. We also are having problems with white margin sedge in a few fields. Loyant seems to work best, but the sedge is so prolific, it’s hard to get it covered the first time. It may take a one-two spray in some of those fields. Do we follow up after Loyant with Basagran or propanil? We will continue to do some testing and hopefully get this weed figured out before it gets more of a foothold here.
In conventional rice, I use RebelEX® herbicide and Facet herbicide to clean up the grass, sprangletop and smartweed before I go to flood.
Today, the cost of fertilizer and fuel is weighing on farmers, but they need to stick to their crop rotation. The price of soybeans may be grand, but soybeans can sometimes drown out or burn up. That usually doesn’t happen to a rice crop. Stay with your established rotation, spread your risk and hang in there.
