G.I.W.A. - "a voice for the grain industry", organised an agronomy update in Perth yesterday. It was a good chance to share yarns about how to grow a good crop. But the theme of the discussions and many of the talks could drive you to drink.
The cynical view is that agronomists have to find something that can be sprayed. So any new weed problem, disease or insect outbreak was keenly discussed. Of course, the breakdown of the old, cheaper herbicides is the next big thing.
You can now add new crop varieties to the hot topics. The farm supply industry has great plans, especially for canola seed sales, but also new cereal varieties.
I don't deny that I find all this interesting, but the axe hanging over our head, of the financial credit squeeze was hardly mentioned. Fair enough perhaps. After all, it was an agronomy meeting.
My problem is that we know a lot about what we can see - weeds, diseases, insects etc. However, "we", as an industry, don't know why we are only averaging 50 to 60 per cent of water use efficiency. It gets hardly a mention.
Another old chestnut for me, is that the more you spray with insecticide, the more insect problems you seem to have. I still can't prove this, but some of the discussion added further support to this theory. After lengthy discussion about threshold levels for spraying aphids in canola, it slipped out that "the crops are only getting the S.P. knockdown". You can't beat an agronomist on this one - the spray is cheap, you will be going over the paddock anyway, and it is not worth taking the risk of not spraying. Even better for the agronomists, is that if you do keep going hard with insect sprays, you will probably soon be seeing plenty of insect problems.
Maybe as the Monty Python galaxy song goes, "pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space, 'cos there's bugger all down here on earth".
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