iPad winner strikes out weeds with UNITE

UK - July 26, 2012

Suffolk farmer Stuart Baker’s skills of striking out blackgrass skittles on Dow AgroSciences’ stand at the Cereals event were rewarded with a top-of-the-range iPad.

Stuart won the bowling alley game that promoted the launch of UNITE, a new herbicide that has been proven to be as effective against blackgrass in winter wheat as any other post emergence product. Unlike competitor products it also has the bonus of extensive broadleaved weed control.

Frontier Agriculture agronomist Ben Myhill advised Stuart to use UNITE last autumn, then available as GF-2070, on his farm in Laxfield, Woodbridge.

“It seemed to be every bit as good as the industry standard I’ve used in the past. We had very little blackgrass as we got the timing right with glyphosate.  “I’ll be using UNITE again this autumn as we have a brome problem and you want something that will do the whole lot rather than having to spray post-emergence twice,” Stuart says.

As well as using UNITE, Stuart also uses Kerb Flo, Starane XL and Dow Shield from Dow AgroSciences range of herbicides. He’s the third generation farmer at Ivy House Farm, which has just over 300ha of rape, wheat, winter barley and sugar beet. Stuart also has 1,500 pigs on contract for Malcolm Easey, of Easey Pigs in Hoxne.

He says: “I’ll get the kids to point me in the right direction with the iPad – I was thinking of getting one so I’m glad I didn’t now. I’ll use it for emails and the internet – if I get an iPhone I can sync them both, which will be useful.

“We use technology from Muddy Boots and all our agronomy plans come in on email. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t get too anti-social by using the iPad too much!”

John Humphreys, regional business manager for the Anglia region at Dow AgroSciences, presented Stuart with his prize this month.