Author: Roger "Darrell" Simpson
Planning Unit: Muhlenberg County CES
Major Program: Chemical Crop Management Tools
Plan of Work: Planning for the Family and Farm
Outcome: Initial Outcome
Preparing grain crop producers to utilize dicamba based herbicides to combat problem weeds such as palmer amaranth and waterhemp was a major educational effort by the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Food and Environment prior to the 2018 growing season. Curtis Dame, Darrell Simpson, and Vicki Shadrick, Extension Agents for Agriculture and Natural Resources in Hopkins, Muhlenberg, and Webster counties worked with Dr. Travis Legleiter to promote and host an educational program regarding this topic. One hundred and seven producers attended the program where they gained knowledge about temperature inversions, correct wind speed for dicamba based herbicide application, correct boom height, and correct record keeping procedures. Forty nine producers utilized their mobile telephones to text their responses to a survey that was conducted immediately after the program. Ninety five percent texted the correct answer when asked what the maximum boom height was when utilizing dicamba based herbicides. Ninety eight percent of the program participants responded that all dicamba based herbicide applications do require recordkeeping. Only 63 percent of the participants texted the correct answer when asked when a temperature inversion was most likely to occur. Ninety six percent of those attending the program responded with the correct answer when asked what the wind speed parameters where when utilizing dicamba based herbicides. When asked to provide one word that depicted their thoughts about utilizing dicamba based herbicides, only 32 of the producers responded. Scared, headache, liability, expensive, difficult, limited, and critical where some of those words but the one response texted more than all others was the word complicated. Although University of Kentucky College of Agriculture Food and Environment Extension Agents for Agriculture and Natural Resources and weed science specialists Dr. Travis Legleiter and Dr. J.D. Green have improved the knowledge level of producers in Kentucky, there is still some work to do.
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