When it comes to preparing for the 2022 growing season, Tommy Butts, Extension weed scientist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture, doesn’t mince words.
“I have less than zero good news, as far as weeds go,” Butts recently told those in attendance at a winter production meeting in Hazen, Arkansas. “This is a year to survive.”
Weeds have long been a challenge in row crop agriculture, threatening everything from degraded crop quality to significant loss of yield. And while herbicide technology has improved over the decades, the tendency of weeds to develop resistance has gradually imperiled that technology’s effectiveness.
In 2022, however, growers will also face a disrupted supply chain and a throttled availability of many of the herbicide technologies they’ve come to rely on. Between natural disasters that have destroyed some production facilities, shipping crisis and labor shortages caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a plastics shortage and China’s move to reduce overall production to ameliorate air pollution ahead of the 2022 Summer Olympic Games, growers in Arkansas and elsewhere are faced with both limited availability and skyrocketing prices for herbicides and more.
Butts said the situation may lead growers to make one of two bad decisions.
“I have two primary concerns for this year,” he said. “One is the high prices of some of our primary herbicides, like glyphosate and glufosinate. Those two are potentially in short supply, as well as atrazine for corn and some others.
“So one of two things is going to happen,” he said. “Guys are either going to have to spend through the roof to get good weed control, and just be unprofitable for the year, or, in the second scenario, guys just cut back.
“If we do that, more than likely, we’re going to have weed escapes, which then may or may not affect your yield this year, but you’re for sure going to replenish the weed seed bank, setting us up for future problems.”
Diesel prices on the rise
Like fertilizer, which has risen 200% to 300% over the last year, herbicides such as glyphosate and glufosinate have also risen as much as 300%, costing as much as $53 and $120 a gallon, respectively.
Scott Stiles, extension economist for the Division of Agriculture, said herbicide prices were among the many input costs growers will grapple with this year.
“Diesel prices have moved sharply higher since Dec. 1,” Stiles said. “Diesel is up 75 cents a gallon over the past two months and is at the highest levels since September 2014. Farm diesel prices are around $3.05 to $3.10 a gallon today — compared to the $2.60 a gallon we used in the crop budgets back in late November. That level of increase has added $20 an acre to our rice variable costs, $10 an acre to soybeans and $11 to $13 an acre for corn and cotton, depending on irrigation method.”
Some give and take
Stiles said there is some “give and take” in other input costs, hinting at the slightest ray of sunshine.
“Some fertilizer prices have weakened over the past month,” he said. “although potash prices have remained fairly flat in recent weeks.”
Stiles said prices for urea and di-ammonium phosphate coming through the Port of New Orleans have fallen about 28 percent and 5 percent, respectively, since mid-November.
“Changes in Gulf prices doesn’t always translate to the local retail level, but we hear from growers that Urea is now being offered at prices below the highs seen in late 2021,” he said. “It’s encouraging to see, but too early to say if it’s the start of a continual trend lower. Historically, we see a firmer price trend in all fertilizer prices from January to March. An extended price decline will generally start sometime in April and extend into late summer.”
Putting the game plan together
Jim Dickson, an agricultural consultant who attended the Hazen production meeting, said he plans to sit down with his clients and study where input costs can be cut, primarily through reducing fertilizer.
“The price has basically doubled what it was last year,” Dickson said. “We take a lot of soil samples every year, so I think we’re ahead of the curve there.”
Earl Hart, who primarily produces cattle and wheat on about 600 acres of land in northern Lonoke County, said rising input costs have likely steered him away from a planned expansion into row crops.
“I’ve planted wheat over the last several years, and mainly use it for stock grazing,” Hart said. “I just bought a farm with a lot of crop base on it, and I don’t know which way I’m going to go on it, but after this production meeting, I’m leaning toward irrigated hay. My inputs kick my tail, just like the row crops farmers’ do.
“I farm to make money,” he said.
Butts said that if popular herbicides do prove to be too expensive or too difficult to acquire, growers should fall back on the basics of good weed control and crop management.
“Weed control is going to take some really specific, precise management this year,” Butts said. “The easiest way to sum it up is to do the little things—they will add up at the end of the year.
“Some of those little things include prioritizing our burndown to make sure we start clean, so we don’t have weeds already going when we plant and our crop is trying to emerge,” he said. “Use pre-emergence residual herbicides, because we haven’t seen as big an issue there with supply, so far. The prices haven’t gone through the roof to the same degree.
“So if we can use those and overlap them, one, we get more consistent weed control, because the residuals are just more consistent, but then we can also save a little money,” Butts said. “It’s always easier to kill weeds before they emerge.”
To learn about extension programs in Arkansas, contact your local Cooperative Extension Service agent or visit www.uaex.uada.edu. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @AR_Extension. To learn more about Division of Agriculture research, visit the Arkansas Agricultural Experiment Station website: https://aaes.uark.edu. Follow on Twitter at @ArkAgResearch. To learn more about the Division of Agriculture, visit https://uada.edu/. Follow us on Twitter at @AgInArk.
