Taking Back Control of Weed Management
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
No one knows a field better than the farmer, but even the most detailed of farmers can still have difficulty managing the weed seed bank, especially over time. At Geco Strategic Weed Management, their technology helps farmers stay on top of weed management by forecasting hotspots with predictive maps.
Stewart… “As we produce these maps, we'll often find that folks will say, well, okay. Oh yeah, you got all the spots I knew about. No, right, I'm forgetting about that one. And we find it depends on a couple of things. So the size of the farm is one thing. As the farm gets big, it's harder to keep track of. And then there's another interesting phenomenon, which is it's not usually everybody who works on the farm who knows where those weeds are. So if you would like a hired person to come in and do this. They won't know where those are. Or maybe, uh, maybe a family member who's dragged into the job, right, who is not familiar where those are. It makes it a lot more systematic that way.”
That’s founder and CEO Dr. Greg Stewart, who says one of the capabilities that customers really like compared to traditional spot spraying is being able to turn around solutions quickly.
Stewart… “You know, in one of the farmers that we talked to early on, you know, I phoned him for the first time on a Wednesday and he was on his tractor. He took the call. He said, yeah, oh, this sounds good. Let's do it. So we provided the analysis out that I think by the next day. And so then on that Saturday he was target-applying herbicides using one of our prescriptions, right. So that stuff can kind of turn around really, really quickly, get the analysis and kind of get things, you know, just get things actually happening.”
Learn more at geco-ag.com.
