So, what happened here? Was there a herbicide failure? Did someone forget to turn on the sprayer? Did it rain too soon after application? Or was this deliberate?
Deliberate? Why would someone do this deliberately?
Open your mind.
Follow me to an alternate reality.
Enter Nelson 's world.
Why? WHY?
Testing. Trying to figure out something. Is that last application of herbicide worth it? How do you decide something like that? The only way you can find out is to conduct a field trial.
Yeah. THAT'S what it is. A field trial.
But wait, do you know what a field trial is? If you're a farmer, or you are familiar with farming you probably know. But for those of you who aren't, you may not. So I'm going to give you a little idea.
This idea of mine about it being a field trial may be right, it may be wrong. I don't know. I don't know the farmer who works that field.
But let's just imagine. Farmer Brown wonders if that last application of herbicide is worth it. How COULD you figure that out?
Well here's how you could do it. You take a field that is all the same crop. Planted the same day. All of the field has been treated the same all year long. Until it comes to that last herbicide application. And you just don't spray part of the field.
Then, when you harvest the field you keep the grain harvested separate. When you take it to the grain elevator/terminal they test it. They weigh your load, test for moisture content, and check for foreign material (weed seed). If the grain is too wet or too much weed seed is present (foreign matter) you get docked.
There is a constant moisture that grain elevators adjust grain to. The level of moisture that is considered 'dry'. For grain sorghum, that level is 14%. The higher the moisture, the more it costs the elevator to dry it and the less they will pay the farmer. 16% moisture results in 2% shrink and a 4¢ per bushel drying charge. 20% moisture would result in 6.7% shrink and a 28¢ per bushel drying charge. I didn't know the precise numbers so I called a local grain elevator to find out. Thanks to Brett who answered the phone and answered my questions. I really appreciated it and it just reminded me of how much I miss being IN farming. He took the time to answer my questions when he didn't know me from Adam.
But back to my idea. If you know how large an area you harvested and how much grain you produced from that area, you can determine what your yield was per acre. Knowing the yield per acre and knowing the cost per acre of production let's a farmer make production decisions.
Weed competition can result in reduced yields, moisture dock can result in lower income. They may have been trying to determine if skipping a herbicide application would affect their bottom line. Like I said, I don't know the farmer, I don't know what happened.
But I do know this. When I was growing up, if a farmer had a field that looked like that and it was visible from the road, he would have needed a good answer for WHY it looked like that. He wouldn't have been able to go into the farm supply, or the feed store, or the coffee shop, or the sale barn, or the grocery store, or the post office, or even church without someone asking him about it. And some churches, well he might have been the subject of a sermon, or at least put on a prayer list.
But in all sincerity, I wonder what the difference in yield was between the 'clean' area and the 'messy' area. Or if there was a difference. For all the talk about sustainability, if a farmer doesn't make a profit, he's not going to be able to sustain his farming effort.
