Posted on 1/20/2017
Harry Stephens is scorching earth to save money and boost yield on his farmland. The Phillips County, Ark., producer spent several hundred dollars to treat 3,000 acres of soybeans with innovative weed prevention using just a few bars of iron, plywood and propane bottles. Narrow windrow burning, a weed control method pioneered in Australia, has arrived on U.S. ground and may offer producers a reduction in soil seed bank population and a drop in herbicide expense.
Palmer amaranth waits to storm Stephens' 3,000 acres of soybeans acres each year, bursting from the ground in early spring.
“We get some pigweed as big around as a man’s leg,” Stephens says.
Two years earlier, a miscommunication at planting left 35 acres with no pre-emerge herbicide applied, and the oversight cost Stephens $100 per acre in subsequent ineffective tr...