6-17 FB Herbicide Resistance

 Roundup ready is a great herbicide that finds it’s way into a lot of Idaho crop fields. It’s almost a miracle that you can spray around plants like sugar beets with an herbicide and the weeds die while the sugar beets thrive. Will that always be the case? I’m David Sparks and I’ll be right back. I was listening to science Friday a couple of days ago and the ag scientists were discussing herbicide resistance. They mentioned a chemical called glyphosate which is a main ingredient in Roundup products from Monsanto. The discussion focused on resistance to herbicides by weeds and how devastating that could be. Sid Freeman is an Idaho  sugar beet farmer and has some thoughts about spraying weeds: “If that weed survives you come back to the field and apply that Roundup again  and if your timing is good, you can certainly get it cleaned up.” Sid said that where farmers run into trouble is with budget. Not spraying enough leads to weeds coming back and I used an analogy. You hear about the use of antibiotics where the complete regimen isn’t completed and the bacteria become resistant. “That’s a very good parable.” Hey I haven’t plugged the web site lately and despite that you folks are sending in some great comments. Got tons of response on a proposalt to put in a slaughterhouse for horses by Wyoming politician Sue Wallis