Title: Making money with weeds

Abstract: The need for the adoption of innovation in weed management seems obvious in agriculture where significant economic issues arise in relation to 'problem' weeds. When a farmer has a problem with weeds, who is he or she going to ask for help? Most weed experts I know assume that the needs of the farmer are related to the weed species and refer them to information about the weed and which chemicals can be used to kill it. The farmer, however, is running a business and his or her needs are related to the profitability and sustainability of the enterprise as a whole. The farmer has questions that relate to how to make money from managing the farm as a whole. Information on how to kill a weed with herbicide may have little relevance to making money in this context, indeed, such advice might make the situation worse for the farmer, both from an economic and an environmental point of view. By only considering a list of chemicals supplied by an agricultural adviser, the farmer will only be getting advice that maximises profit for the chemical supplier. Such advice may not be the kind of advice that maximises profitability for the farmer, especially in the long-term. For example, if the advice is to knock down or 'terminate' a weedy cover crop with herbicide instead of using the cover crop for fodder, the chemical supplier will profit and the farmer will miss out on an important economic opportunity. [Photo: Holisically managed cattle at Eggers Farm , USA]

Under a chemically based weed control strategy, problem weeds may develop chemical resistance, requiring more chemicals of higher toxicity. In this scenario -- a very common one these days I should add -- the agricultural chemical supplier is selling a solution to fix the problem they have created. The farmer is losing by being locked into an expensive chemical dependency and missing out on profitable options, such as using the weed biomass to feed stock or replenish the soil.

As the above is intended to illustrate, in weed management, the assumption is often that it is the weed that is having the financial impact rather than the context in which the weed issue arises and is then managed. Thus, and as Allan Savory would be quick to point out, farmers should not necessarily be interested in killing weeds, but rather, they should be turning their attention to finding out what they are doing to cause weeds to flourish and how they can change this context so that their land management generates income and makes more profit. By only addressing the eradication of a weed, a farmer is failing to recognise that he or she is only seeing the symptom of a system out of balance – their farm ecosystem – and that by thinking about weeds from within a more holistic context, they can maximise the profitability of their enterprise. Holistic or systems thinking is needed to ‘make money out of weeds’. [Low, D. W. (2013). Making money with weeds. Presented at The Day After Tomorrow Conference, Orange, Australia, 6th August - Download PowerPoint 19.5MB] Comment



Attachments:
Making Money with Weeds Final 1.ppsx
Article: WeedsNews4577 (permalink)
Date: 10 August 2013; 10:07:55 pm Australian Eastern Standard Time

Author Name: Zheljana Peric
Author ID: zper12