The Rural Voice, 2000-04, Page 59Advice
energy related. This may indicate the
advantage of changing your crop
plans. A word of caution is needed
here. Before changing, look at what
the effect on your overall profitability
would be if you changed your
rotation patterns? If producers all
move toward soybean production, an
already oversupplied market will
respond with even further decreases
in price. Will these decreases be
greater than your fuel savings?
6) Plan ahead — Get recommen-
dations and suggested alternatives
from agri-business and crop advisors.
Exploring alternatives with
accompanying partial budgets needs
to be the order of the day as we
approach the 2000 planting season.
7) Renegotiate land rental rates —
For those not locked into a lease
agreement, the one area that can
improve your bottom line will be
land rental rates. Monitoring input
resources not affected by fuel costs
needs to be high on the list of "To
Do's".
Increasing fuel costs will have a
serious effect on the farmers' bottom
line. Take action now to reduce the
impact on your operation.0
Dealing with weeds
in your orchard
By Leslie Huffman
Weed Lead for Horticultural
Crops, OMAFRA
Many orchard and vineyard
growers have reported too many
weed escapes during 1999. Some
orchard growers have been trying
new herbicides that were registered
under the Minor Use program over
the past few years. Others continued
with their usual practice for
controlling weeds. In both situations,
reports of large numbers of
pigweeds, annual grasses and some
perennial weeds were received from
most areas of the province.
Why so many weed escapes? In
most areas, the weather patterns
favoured late weed germination, as
well as poor performance of
herbicides. Soil -applied herbicides,
including simazine, Karmex, Lexone
or Sencor, Dual Magnum, Sinbar,
linuron and Devrinol need moisture
for activation. Generally these
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FARMS
VARNA
APRIL 2000 55