Drift now vs 5 years ago

[bucket]

Retailer responsibility. ...stop it....my sides are hurting.

[Oliver88]

Never been involved in a spray drift issue but farm next to a lot of bush, pastures, lakes and always seed one crop per field.

Lack of respect and carelessness is likely the root cause for most of these issues. This will continue to get worse with investors instead of farmers controlling farms and as they continue to remove treelines with track hoes.......

[farming101]

Wind has blown strong from one or another quadrant in the south for
over a week. Bad for spraying.

[boarderbloke]

If you add up the daylight hours with wind under 20kms this spring, your not looking at a lot of hours in the field. Then for areas like us in SESK, also subtract out daylight hours when it's been raining or the fields are too wet to put a sprayer in without doing damage, your opportunity is greatly reduced again, plus, especially if your watching crop stages.
I think there are more farmers who won't go into various fields and spray up to the fence line when the wind is the right direction if it still means they have to come back a second time to get the rest of the field. Maybe it's the distance they have to travel with the sprayer, but they want to go to the field ONLY ONCE. Some of my bigger neighbours will leave 30 feet of an unbelievable amount of weeds next to me, rather than leaving a full pass if it means they'll have to come back to the field a second time.
I've sprayed in 30km this spring but have lowered the boom and pressure and have been on a half section of my own or a full section staying way back from the neighbours if their crop was the same type. I'm willing to come back(my land is generally close) to get what I had to leave.
I normally would never spray over 20kms, and never on a damp field and this year I've done both, many times.

[farmaholic]

A survey of what kind of tips are being used would be interesting.

[stonepicker]

Good old flat fan nozzles, still one of the best out there!

[AlbertaFarmer5]

If this problem is so widespread, and if people are acting so irresponsibly, aren't we setting ourselves up for more regulation? Wouldn't it be in our own best interests to all act responsibly, not cause a lot of public lawsuits or insurance claims and not advertise to the entire internet how careless "they" are being with a tool that is already highly suspect to most of our consumers and non farming neighbors. All we need is a high profile news story or criminal case of a dead school lawn, neighbours garden, orchard, or fish to have regulations forced upon us. How convinient would it be to have to file a "flight plan" everytime you want to go out spraying, or only be able to use custom applicators, or have big government pronounce what days are spray days?

[farming101]

Was reading the weed book on Infinity.
It says if spraying by air with fixed wing aircraft leave 375 meter buffer zone next to terrestrial habitat.
That's a lot of weeds.

[freewheat]

A huge part of it here, is that if there is a tree on your land, or bordering your land, you rip them out. Gotta get that extra 12 feet! My land is mostly surrounded by treelines, or bordered by lakes, or my own land. for the most part. I can spray somewhere on my land almost any day of the week, in any wind direction. A LOT of woods have disappeared, tree-lines are gone, yard sites are gone.

Of course it is windy!

For here at least, that is IMHO, the reason there are more drift issues now. My tree lines will stay. So I can continue to spray and play. They make excellent travel corridors for game, and I like eating game!

Along with that fact, guys never used to do multiple passes at the sight of four weeds. The sprayer is the new tractor, it gets used almost all summer long, and most everyone has a high clearance. When you see one go through a dip at an angle, and one boom is eight feet off the ground, you gotta wonder.

[fjlip]

A huge part of it here, is that if there is a tree on your land, or bordering your land, you rip them out. Gotta get that extra 12 feet! My land is mostly surrounded by treelines, or bordered by lakes, or my own land. for the most part. I can spray somewhere on my land almost any day of the week, in any wind direction. A LOT of woods have disappeared, tree-lines are gone, yard sites are gone.

Of course it is windy!

For here at least, that is IMHO, the reason there are more drift issues now. My tree lines will stay. So I can continue to spray and play. They make excellent travel corridors for game, and I like eating game!

Along with that fact, guys never used to do multiple passes at the sight of four weeds. The sprayer is the new tractor, it gets used almost all summer long, and most everyone has a high clearance. When you see one go through a dip at an angle, and one boom is eight feet off the ground, you gotta wonder.

You got it Free, 15 mph, 8 feet in the air here too! My wheel boom, at 10mph, 20" max from target all day long, any terrain. Same here ALL fencelines, yards, any tree, even power lines privately buried for that.

[Braveheart]

Was once accused of drift on a neighbors wheat field. We had records of wind direction, speed and chem used. That helped the agologists consulting look elsewhere. It turned out to be wheat mosaic around the edges of field from uncontrolled volunteer winter wheat. Point is, we kept records that helped in our liability in this case.

[Braveheart]

Wheat streak mosaic that is.