People love to try to summarize everything into neat and tidy “Blanket Statements”. However agriculture, like many things in life, is complex enough that blanket statements rarely do the topic justice.  I was recently reminded of this on a couple of occasions.

The first was an observation an associate of mine had when scouting soybeans. He noticed that there were a few beans dying moving down a row. That is typically a symptom associated with Phytophtora Root rot and was the blanket judgement that was initially made. Yet upon further review, there were White grubs crewing pruning the roots on plants that were already moisture stressed from the long dry patch we endured in July. White grub damage is typically something we deal with earlier in growing season when it is cool and plants are small. Yet, this year later reports of White Grubs are emerging in multiple areas.

The second observation of Blanket statements is with the multiple “experts” that have opinions on Dicamba damage to soybeans this summer. Dicamba damage is a complex and serious issue. However, there are many folks expressing their opinions/theories as if they are the gospel. Please be wary of being sucked into the drama of the blanket statements being treated as facts. The facts are that Dicamba is a tool that can help us with resistant weeds. We (agriculture industry) are dealing with some Volatility/use challenges. The fact remains is that if we as an industry can find a way to minimize the challenges that we will a be better for it. It likely won’t be a simple blanket statement that solves it though.