Stacy Harty
Stacy Harty and his brother Shaune farm 9,000 acres at Etzikom in southeast Alberta.

The Hartys buy their crop protection products from W. Buis Holdings Ltd. in nearby Foremost. In buying their in-crop herbicide treatments in the past, products came in 40-acre cases. “We bought an 18-foot trailer and would get three pallets of DuPont™ Harmony® K which we would take to the field where we were spraying. There were four different sized jugs per case that we would have to mix in the field, and at the end of the season we’d have a 16-foot horse trailer full of containers and packaging to take for recycling.”

With the DuPont™ PrecisionPac™ herbicides, Harty can order the precise blend of herbicide in a concentrated, dry formulation. In the field, they have a 5,300-gallon water tank, mounted on a trailer. On the rear deck of the trailer is a Chem Handler where they mix the packet of herbicide with water and then pump into the sprayer tank.

“It is just such a convenient system,” says Harty. “What used to come by the pallet, now is in a few small packages. And I can order it as I need it. With GPS and autosteer I have a pretty good handle on field size and how chemical is applied. But if I happen to be 20 acres short of product, I can just buy enough for 20 acres and I have don’t have to buy a 40-acre case and have half of it left over.”

“Convenience when you’re spraying is a huge factor,” he says. “When conditions are right and we have everything in place one person can spray 1,000 acres a day. We don’t need a whole family of people to help in the field. One of us can be spraying, and the other person can be doing something else.”

“With conventional packaging in 40-acre cases, if a guy was filling up his sprayer he would need four or five cases, which means he’d have about 15 empty jugs each time,” says the Harty’s retailer, Lorne Buis. “With PrecisonPac™ you have a jug of surfactant and one pouch of dry product and you are ready to go.”

Colin Marshall

Colin Marshall and his wife Leanne crop about 7,000 acres near Edgerton in east central Alberta.

Colin Marshall does hire seasonal help at the peak periods of the crop production cycle, but he tries to handle as much of the fieldwork over his 7,000-acre farm himself.

Marshall follows a zero till, direct seeding system, which usually begins in early May with a pre-seeding herbicide burnoff with glyphosate at the half litre rate over the whole farm. In fields where he may have patches of narrow-leaved hawk’s-beard or volunteer Roundup Ready^® canola, he’ll also add Express^® SG to glyphosate for expanded weed control.

A single pass seeding operation follows right after the pre-seeding herbicide treatment. He uses a 64-foot wide, Bourgault 5710 air drill, equipped with knife openers, with small wings on the opener to place liquid fertilizer to the side of the seed row.

He’s used PrecisionPac™ herbicides for the past two seasons for an in-crop herbicide application on about 5,000 acres of wheat. His crop protection retailer is headquartered in Wainwright, which is about 25 miles from the farm.

“It is more efficient and probably reduces the time spent on the whole spraying operation by about 10 percent,” says Marshall. “The nice feature for me is that I can have the packages of chemical tailored either to field size or sprayer capacity. Whether I am running the sprayer myself, or have a hired man on the sprayer, each pack is exactly what I need."

Depending on the weed mix in different fields, Marshall uses three different blends. “I do most of my own field scouting, but I do rely on the advice of my chemical dealer as well,” he says. “I explain what weeds I am seeing in the fields and then we decide on the best combination of products for that field.”

Marshall applies herbicides with an 80 foot wide Spray Coupe Model 4650, with a 400-gallon capacity tank. He brings a 2,000 gallon water tank to the field, adds the herbicide to the Chem Handler, which mixes the product with water and from there it is pumped into the sprayer.

With the assistance of both GPS and autosteer technology, Marshall says he has both an accurate measurement of field size and application. On an average day, he says one sprayer operator can cover about 1,000 acres.