SWAT 011: Technology for Weed Management with Josh Lade

SWAT Agronomy

Josh Lade farms along with two other families north of Saskatoon, SK where they raise wheat, canola, peas, lentils and barley. Josh grew up on Kangaroo Island in Australia, on a sheep and seed potato farm. Upon moving to Canada over 12 years ago, Josh found a keen interest in the technology side of the business. He joins us to talk about precision weed control, his experience with the SWAT CAM, and harvest weed seed management.

“That's going to be a way that I feel that we can really prove to the wider population that we need these chemicals to be sustainable in a way that we don't have to go back and till everything, but we're putting them where we need them. We're not putting them everywhere.” - Josh Lade, Saskatchewan farmer

Follow Josh on Twitter

On Today’s Episode:

2:05 - Meet Josh Lade and discover his journey from growing up in Australia to farming with variable rate technology in Canada

3:45 - Learn how Josh has integrated newer variable rate technologies on his operation and how alkaline soils motivated him to pursue it

05:38 - Explore the unexpected benefits Josh encountered while evaluating and mapping soils including different levels of sulfur and how that helped balance the additional cost of having the soil maps created

9:44 - Discover the future benefits which affects his seed rates and input expenses that Josh has been able to achieve as he continues collecting and monitoring the data generated by SWAT maps

9:39 - Learn about the SWAT CAM used by Crop Pro and how easy it is to use and the value it provides producers like Josh for kochia management

13:53 - Hear about the value in harvest weed seed control and the use of the seed terminator that helps reduce the influence of weeds in the soil seed bank

17:31 - Explore the already realized financial benefits to these technologies

21:52 - Josh discusses how technology is best introduced and evaluated for use on his operation to determine if it will be a good investment and fit

26:54 - Josh shares some parting words of advice for any producers thinking about exploring precision agriculture and how best to introduce it

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If you have a question you want answered on a future episode, send it to us on Twitter using the hashtag #SWATAgronomy.

The SWAT Agronomy Podcast is brought to you by SWAT MAPS, and hosted by Tim Hammerich.