Are We Making Progress with Weed Management in Iowa?

Jun 28, 2021

By Ann Staudt

A retired weed management specialist with Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and professor emeritus at Iowa State will discuss the past four decades of herbicide use during an Iowa Learning Farms webinar June 30 at noon.

Bob Hartzler, in his presentation “Weed Management in Iowa: 40 Years of Progress?” will discuss the herbicidal-based approach to weed management that has been used over the past 40 years.

He will discuss the changes in weeds and the tools used to control them over the course of his career. He noted that since the mid-1970s, weed management has relied on the continuous introduction of new chemicals to account for weed adaptation.

“The pace of weed evolution is greater than that of herbicide discovery,” said Hartzler. “We cannot continue down the same path currently used to manage weeds.”

Participants are encouraged to ask questions of the presenters. People from all backgrounds and areas of interest are encouraged to join.

Source : iastate.edu

Video: How American Farmers Harvest 1.15 Billion Pounds of Sunflowers

Across the open plains of North Dakota and South Dakota, sunflower fields turn the American landscape into a sea of gold. In this farming documentary, we go inside modern sunflower farming to see how farmers plant, grow, harvest, clean, dry, process, and transform sunflower seeds into valuable products used every day.

In 2024, American farmers harvested about 1.15 billion pounds of sunflowers. This video follows the full journey from warm spring planting to combine harvesting, seed cleaning, storage, oil extraction, refining, roasting, packaging, and animal feed production.

You will see how sunflower seeds are processed into cooking oil, roasted snacks, bakery ingredients, birdseed, livestock feed, and useful byproducts. From golden fields to modern processing plants, this is the story of how a beautiful flower becomes one of America’s important oilseed crops.

Watch until the end to discover how sunflower farming connects farmers, machines, factories, food production, and sustainable agriculture.