After a fairly long hiatus, a tweet from Corteva has earned a coveted spot in the HOS. This is a tough one since the company has used a farmer’s quote to disregard the principles of integrated weed management, rather than someone in marketing dreaming up an irresponsible advertisement.
Following is the text of the tweet (location of farmer removed): Control of resistant weeds makes the Enlist™ system irresistible. “The very first year I did it, I was really impressed,” says XXXXX XXXXX farmer. “They’ve taken the resistance issue away.”
I fully understand farmers’ desires/needs for more effective weed management tools, and the EnlistTM system is an effective tool to help manage resistant weeds. But everyone should recognize EnlistTM, or any other new trait or herbicide option, is a short-term fix to the resistance problem. As long as we continue to use herbicides as the primary tool for managing weeds, herbicide resistance will be a serious threat to our production system.
I don’t intent to be critical of the farmer in the ad, instead my ire is targeted at the marketing people at Corteva. Ironically, in an accompanying video the farmer talked about protecting his farm so he could pass it on to future generations. Corteva should be just as concerned about protecting the value of 2,4-D, this promotion fails at that.
Acknowledgments:
1) I appreciate being notified of this tweet by an anonymous follower.
2) The day following posting this article a person with Corteva marketing contacted me and we had a good discussion regarding the tone of tweet. I appreciate their willingness to accept criticism without getting defensive.
Links to this article are strongly encouraged, and this article may be republished without further permission if published as written and if credit is given to the author, Integrated Crop Management News, and Iowa State University Extension and Outreach. If this article is to be used in any other manner, permission from the author is required. This article was originally published on February 4, 2020. The information contained within may not be the most current and accurate depending on when it is accessed.
- Retired Weed Scientist and Professor of Agronomy