While farmers will have plenty on their minds during harvest, one thing that cannot be ignored is quality control, particularly dumping treated seed in with harvested soybeans. Even a small amount of contamination can affect the amount of money a farmer receives at the elevator and can even halt entire international shipments.
“Contamination will put farmers under the microscope of any of their end users anytime they drop off a load of beans,” says Doug Winter, soy checkoff farmer-leader from Mill Shoals, Illinois. “This would be a black eye for U.S. soybean farmers in general.”
To maintain the United States’ reputation as a leading global supplier of high-quality soy, the checkoff urges U.S. soybean farmers to:
- Carefully inspect and thoroughly clean gravity boxes, truck beds, wagons and equipment that carried treated seed.
- Contact your seed company to find out its policies for handling treated seed. Seed companies will offer guidelines on how to properly dispose of it, and some companies will even accept returns of treated seed.
“Farmers need to check all of their handling equipment very closely,” Winter says. “They should also properly dispose of any treated seed. Taking both of those steps will help keep our reputation safe.”
Source : unitedsoybean.org