Tommy Butts

8 articles by this author

Article List

The State of our Soybeans: A cropping system intensification survey for soybean farmers and agronomists

August 8, 2025 - From Issue:
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Hello to all of our faithful readers! I hope that the 2025 growing season has started to wind down for most of you and that you’re catching a well-deserved break before harvest season kicks into full gear. I’m writing this post to request your help once again with completing a survey (https://bit.ly/soy-survey) as a part of national research effort between agronomists and weed scientists. This survey will help provide insights into current soybean production practices, weed management strategies, and opportunities for the implementation of alternative production strategies. Agricultural scientists from Kansas State University, Purdue University, the University of Arkansas, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and the Iowa Soybean Association (in collaboration with the checkoff-funded North Central, Mid-South, South, and Atlantic soybean regions) would like your help in gathering soybean management information, perspectives on intensification methods (including double cropping and intercropping), and economics regarding these management strategies. We would appreciate you taking[Read More…]

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Residual Herbicides: Precipitation Requirements For Activation And The Likelihood To Receive It

April 25, 2025 - From Issue:
By: , , and
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Planting season is getting fully underway across the state, and with that we should all be getting our residual herbicides applied. Residuals are critical to successful season-long weed control as we have less documented herbicide resistance to these chemistries compared to postemergence products, as well as generally we see more consistent control from these herbicides because we’re targeting weeds before they’re even out of the ground. However, for residual herbicides to be successful, they require precipitation to be activated. I frequently get asked how much rainfall is required to fully activate these herbicides, how long can the herbicide wait until we’d receive this rainfall, and if a shallow tillage event would help the situation. These answers can be highly variable across herbicides (Tables 1 and 2), as they are normally dependent on water solubility and soil adsorption of the active ingredients; however, there are some general estimates that can be[Read More…]

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Weather Related Weed Management Items

June 7, 2024 - From Issue:
By: , and

Recent wet, rainy weather has created some weed management challenges for Indiana growers.  In this article we will hit on a few key points to consider based on current challenges. Delayed weed control in corn.  Indiana corn growers rely heavily on premixes in corn that contain some combination of group 15 herbicides (metolachlor, acetochlor, pyroxasulfone), atrazine, mesotrione (Callisto), clopyralid (Stinger), and bicyclopyrone.  Rain will not have completely washed all of the herbicide away, but may have compromised overall activity.  Scout fields as soon as possible to determine if weeds are escaping.  Obviously giant ragweed is a big concern, but wet conditions and dilution of atrazine can result in failures to control velvetleaf, burcucumber, morningglories, waterhemp, cocklebur and others.  If corn is less than 12 inches tall and you haven’t used all of the atrazine allowed by the label, it would be wise to add atrazine to the other postemergence herbicides[Read More…]

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Harvest Aid Herbicide Treatments for Wheat

June 7, 2024 - From Issue:
By: , and
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Pre-harvest herbicide applications may be needed in wheat fields that have a lot of weed growth due to the recent wet weather patterns.  These herbicide applications address several issues such as harvest difficulties, dockage problems, weed seed production, and soil water depletion. Although it may not be possible to recover lost yield potential due to weed interference, a pre-harvest treatment can go a long way toward reducing weed problems in future years by preventing the production and spread of weed seed. Herbicides labeled for use as harvest aids in wheat are listed in Table 1. There are differences in how quickly they act to control target weeds, the interval requirement between application and grain harvest, and the level or length of control achieved. All of these herbicide treatments will require thorough spray coverage to be most effective and can be used once wheat reaches the hard dough stage, which is[Read More…]

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