View from the Cab: A minimal impact

U of I's Dr. Emerson Nafziger (right) addresses the Livingston County Agronomy Day last week as Dale Durcholz of Agrivisor looks on.

Many soybean fields which appeared to be heavily damaged by dicamba herbicide last season weren’t damaged much from a yield standpoint, according to one crop expert.

University of Illinois Extension agronomist Dr. Emerson Nafziger notes that significant dicamba damage resulted in few yield penalties in trials across the state even though there was noticeable damage and people looking for damage.

“We’ve never had a year with no dicamba injury anywhere,” Nafziger told me at last week’s Livingston County Agronomy Day. “Previously, it was coming out of cornfields and into soybean fields. We know that’s always an issue with dicamba.”

Nafziger has witnessed growers think a field is pretty much “fried” from herbicide damage but yield results show otherwise, revealing the field really didn’t suffer much damage at all.

“The effects, depending on when they happen, may not really be affecting the yield negatively.”

Experts from the University of Illinois and elsewhere learned quite a bit from the past growing season. In addition to the soybean response to dicamba, trials also studied corn yields. Nafziger said whenever we have a year with high corn yields like 2017, there aren’t very large areas with low yields in Illinois. Some poor crops were observed in southwestern Illinois, but they were confined to an area which experienced bad weather at pollination time.

Thanks to the Livingston County Farm Bureau, Country Financial and Evergreen FS for another informative Agronomy Day event. We also heard a weather outlook from Jim Angel and market analysis from Dale Durcholz at Agrivisor. This is one meeting I especially look forward to each year because of the amount of information I walk away with.

It was also great seeing some familiar faces at last week’s Midwest Ag Expo near Gifford. The crowd seemed large in the morning, but after lunch things died down quickly. The free vanilla ice cream cones from Ken’s Oil Service were once again a huge hit along with the warm chocolate chip cookies from Hicksgas and free buckets from Stone Seed.

(The View from the Cab blog is powered each week by Petersen Chevy-Buick in Fairbury)