Steel in the Field

Let’s face it -– controlling weeds remains the no. 1 challenge facing producers across America. Trying to do so with few or no herbicides presents an even tougher battle.

In some ways, cultivating for weed control is almost a lost art. Herbicides seemed to work so well for so long that many farmers abandoned mechanical means of control. Today, farmers are employing many techniques to control weeds, including careful selection of crops in rotations, using cover crops to compete with and smother weeds and, of course, mechanical cultivation. With new implements and improved versions of the basic rotary hoes, basket weeders and flame weeders of 50 years ago, we are seeing improved efficiency.

Steel in the Field: A Farmer’s Guide to Weed Management Tools provides information about how each implement works, rates each tool’s usefulness in certain conditions, identifies problems other farmers have faced and how to get more information. First published in 1997, this revised 2002 version includes updated tool sources with World Wide Web sites, updated contact information for experts and current tool prices.

This is the first tool-centered book to combine farmer experience, commercial agicultural engineering expertise and university research. It directly tackles the hard questions of how to comply with erosion-prevention plans, how to remain profitable and how to manage residue and moisture loss.

Farmers -– 22 of them –- do a lot of the talking, sharing their struggles and successes with tools, weeds, herbicides and cropping systems.