One of the things that makes glyphosate such a useful herbicide is that it breaks down very quickly.  Even crops that are glyphosate intolerant can be seeded within a few days of application.  If glyphosate residue is lingering, it can severely affect subsequent crop yield.

One of the ways that glyphosate residue can remain in the soil is when plants sprayed with glyphosate take the glyphosate into their roots.  The roots then store the glyphosate as the plant dies.  The glyphosate does not break down quickly in the roots, so when the roots themselves decompose some time later they release the glyphosate into the soil.  This can kill the crop.   Tillage practices are key for reducing the risk.

Another point raised in the study is that glyphosate can accumulate in low phosphorous soils by binding with the soil.  If the soil phosphorous is too high, the glyphosate does not bind and is therefore at a greater risk of leaching.  This is an important point to keep in mind for manured fields as they tend to have high phosphorous.

Glyphosate is still a tremendously useful product.  This study just highlights further considerations to bear in mind when spraying a field.

Manitoba Weather

I’ve talked about Manitoba Ag-Weather Stations and Environment Canada Weather Stations as good sources for historical weather data.  The Canadian Wheat Board also has the WeatherBug network of weather stations across Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta.  There also seem to be other stations in the network across Canada and the world, but the browser application didn’t show me those consistently so I couldn’t check them out.

On the demo site they offer daily historical data such as temperature, wind speed, and dewpoint.  I’m trying to find out if we can get historical hourly breakdowns that would include rainfall and wind direction.  There seem to be a lot of these stations, so they would be very helpful in getting weather data for damage claims and for general crop scouting.

The CWB has a video with Chris Kletke talking the benefits of having a weather station on his farm.  Chris is my cousin, so I’ll have to ask him aboutthis at the next family get-together.  The things you learn on the Internet!

Spray drift from the neighbor’s has killed half your crop, cows have wandered over and munched their way through your plastic silage cover, the latest drain modifications and heavy rains have washed away half your field, strips of the field were missed, hay was baled when it was way too wet, that low-flying plane sprayed your trees, or the wrong herbicide was put into the sprayer tank.  Whatever the cause, things are looking ugly.

Here are a few suggestions for how Tone Ag Consulting can help with your crop damage claim. 

Call us early  The ideal situation is to get things settled without involving anyone but you and the person responsible for the damage.  If it looks as though it’s not going to be settled quickly get Tone Ag to come out as quickly as possible to assess the damage.  We can perform a more accurate assessment of the damage if we’re there early on.  We’ve done crop damage claims across agricultural Manitoba and even into eastern Saskatchewan.  Usually we can be there within a couple days.

Write it down  The more information you have written down, the quicker and easier the assessment will be.  Here are some suggestions for things to note:

• Legal description of the field
• Crop and variety
• Date seeded
• Chemicals applied
• Date damage was first observed
• Suspected source
• Description of damage
• Contact information for any other parties involved (lawyers, insurance agents, custom applicators, and so on)

Don’t do anything to the field till it’s been assessed  On a couple of cases, we’ve come out to do an assessment and found that the field has been partially or completely worked under.  Needless to say, this doesn’t make for a solid assessment.

Tone Ag Consulting can provide you with an independent third-party assessment of the damage done to your crops.  If your crop damage claim goes to court we can serve as expert witnesses and back up our damage assessments with solid facts and figures.  If you need help with a crop damage claim, give us a call!

NOTE: These are going to be even more inaccurate than the Environment Canada Weather Stations.  The points represent the towns that share the names of the Manitoba Ag-Weather Stations rather than the actual station locations.  This should be accurate to within a couple miles, but as always there are no guarantees.  Don’t go to downtown Selkirk and expect to find a weather station sitting there!  If you have any corrections, please send them to me and I will update the files.  With that caution in mind, here is a link to the Google Earth kmz file and another to the shapefile in UTM.

EDIT: MAFRI has sent me better data for the Manitoba Ag-Weather Station locations. Use with caution, but these should be much closer to the correct locations: Google Earth kmz and shapefile in UTM.

UPDATE: Note that due to internet connectivity issues, the Glenlea station has been offline for some time. Hopefully it returns in the not too distant future.

NOTE:  I had to do a number of conversions, cut and paste information from web pages, and so on.  These are at best rough estimates of the station locations and it’s almost guaranteed that I’ve made some mistakes along the way.  The accuracy of this map is questionable – use with caution.  If you have any corrections, please send them to me and I will update the files.  With that caution in mind, here is a link to the Google Earth kmz file and another to the shapefile in UTM. 

I find this information very useful when Tone Ag Consulting is called in on a damage claim and we want to know what the weather was like on particular day.  Finding a nearby weather station is a bit tricky at times, so I’m hoping that this map will simplify the process.  I’m hoping to make up similar files for the Manitoba Ag-Weather Program in the not-too-distant future. 

Digital Photography School has a good Introduction to Geotagging Images.  I found the part on geotagging images using a separate GPS and camera to be particularly interesting.  The precision that a GPS brings when tagging photos for damage claims would be extremely useful.  So far this hasn’t been enough of an issue to justify buying a camera with a built-in GPS, so I’ve used very simple, very rough geotagging.  The method described looks as though it’ll bring a lot more precision without any extra cost. 

Here are the steps to geotagging using a separate GPS and camera.

1. Synchronize the time for the GPS and camera as closely as possible
2. Have the GPS record a track with points every 90 seconds or so (more often if you want more precision, less often if you want to record a longer track)
3. Carry the GPS with you as you take photos
4. Download the photos and tracks to your computer
5. Use synchronizing software to synchronize the two

The synchronizing software compares the time on the photo to the time on the GPS track, then uses the closest match to determine where you were when the photo was taken. 

I’m looking forward to trying this out over the course of the summer.  It’s always fun to learn new ways of using tools! 

Historical Weather

We may not be able to predict the weather, but Manitoba does a pretty good job of keeping track of what the weather has been across the province.  We find this very useful in damage claims – if the wind was from the south, it’s not likely that chemical drifted a long way against the wind. 

Every once in a while we are asked to comment a damage claim that’s several years old, so it’s good to be able to go way back and see what the weather was like at the time of damage.  For almost every claim, we will note the wind direction and speed on the damage date.  For some claims, precipitation, temperature, and weather can be important information as well.

National Climate Data and Information Archive has weather information going back over a hundred years in some places.  It usually takes them a little bit to update their current data

Manitoba Ag-Weather Program has stations scattered throughout the agricultural portion of Manitoba. They also include soil temperature with their weather data.

If someone’s looking for a project to fill quiet days, a map showing the location of all the weather stations in Manitoba would be a very useful tool.