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Insurance companies are checking...they're going to make sure that if you said you planted a triple that there's a triple out there. Otherwise you got a deal on seed, got a deal on insurance, and still may have a claim vs. the triple. With the refuge, its not that we don't want to kill all the bugs...completely anyway. Refuge is about overall risk management. In every reproducing pest population, we see a few individuals that become resistant to XXXX pesticide. We've seen it with ALS herbicides, a few cases with RU, etc. With YG corn, we don't want the corn borer, or crw to become resistant to the BT gene. If we all planted 100% BT corn, there would be alot of selection pressure against the susceptable bugs. Only those resistant would survive, and only the strongest of those resistant would thrive. If we plant a refuge, we'll always have a susceptable pool of breeding insects to dilute that resistant population out, and we'll continue to have consistent control of these pests. The refuge is there to preserve the effectivness of the trait, and ensure that it has a long life. This is the same principle that we should apply to many other aspects of our production systems. With cattle ear-tags, I suggest swapping modes of action of the insecticide every year or two. This doesn't mean changing brands, but changing active ingredients regardless of brand. With HT crops, we should look into swapping modes of action, Glyphosate vs. Liberty, and using secondary controls, such as a pre down early followed by RR or Liberty. When dealing with nature, there are alot of systems in place for plants and animals to survive in the harshest enviroments. In production agriculture, we attempt to manage nature by creating harsh enviroments for some creatures/plants and encouraging the growth of others. To do this we must consider our every action to ensure that we are applying a best practices approach to our farming systems. that got a little longer than i first anticipated i'd be surprised if anyone makes it to this point in the message. Back to the original topic though, I disced a little of the wife's garden plots-she raises cut flowers, and we've got 1/4-1/2Acre devoted to flowers. I hope to get some manure spread now that its a little smoother, but won't get done...there's still water standing in a couple plots. I saw marks in the gravel road where someone was going down the road w/ a field cultivator w/a harrow, so there's a little work being done here in the Iowa City/CR, IA area, but not much yet.
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