26 / SEEDWORLD.COM OCTOBER 2018 DECIDING WHETHER OR not to apply seed treatment to cover crop seed is no different from deciding to treat any seed. In every situation, the answer is the same: it depends. Investing in crop protection products is similar to deciding what insurance to buy. Use critical thinking and be aware of what is needed. Compare the cost of protection to the value of potential losses. Also, consider how pest pressures may be changing. Some growers may simply decide that they need it all and apply as much product as possible just to be safe. This is like buying insurance simply because it is available. If you live on a hill, you don’t need flood insurance. Other growers will look at yield data, indicating that seed treatments provide a 3 to 5 percent average yield increase, and decide there is not enough benefit to jus- tify the cost. This approach ignores that averages hide the extremes. Assume seed treatments result in a 3.5 percent yield increase for four consecutive years. Then in the fifth year, crops suffer a 12 percent pest-related yield loss. Taken together, the total five-year yield advantage averages only 0.5 percent. For most farmers and their bankers, the cost of seed treatment to avoid a 12 percent yield loss is a worth- while expense. Evaluate local conditions. We know different geographies have different risks. Don’t buy more insurance than you need to protect your yield. If wireworms, for example, are not a problem in your area, you need not apply wireworm protection. You Don’t Need Flood Insurance If You Live on a Hill TOM KROLL, NUFARM AMERICAS TECHNICAL AND PRODUCT MANAGER @NufarmUS • tom.kroll@nufarm.com • www.nufarm.com Work with your chemical supplier to select those products that are effective against your known risks. When local history indicates an emerging problem, five-year averages may not account for the new threat. Be a good steward of both your resources and the environment when making crop protection decisions. Over-applying chemicals just to be safe is not a sustainable, long-term decision. So how does this all relate to cover crops? You plant a cover crop because it will bring value by enhancing your soil and generally benefiting the environment. Protect your cover crop investment the same way you protect your investment in any other crop. Be a steward of your resources, and protect your seed against the risks present in your local environment. GREAT SEEDSMANSHIP DEMANDS a lot from those who practice it. It demands an intimate familiarity with one’s plant. It demands knowledge and experience to design an equipment line capable of filtering product as efficiently as possible. When I host an Oliver training session, or I visit a plant to troubleshoot inefficiencies, I ask for one thing from my audiences: to listen with an open mind. I remember a plant I worked in. Everyday I’d walk in, talk with the shift foreman and listen to the sounds coming from the entanglement of machines. One day, he said, “We’ve got a cup ticking.” And sure as you-know-it, we followed the sound and discovered a leg where a cup was loose. It sat there, ticking against the guarding. It hadn’t hurt anything at the time. But if we’d ignored it, eventually it’d rip right off. It’d get bailed up and we’d be left with a ton of down time. This could have easily been the squall of an auger, growl of a bearing or belt noise. When you are in a plant and trying to find the source of a problem, you have to listen to your machines. The plant will talk to you if you are willing to listen. But it is up to you to hear it. We as seedsmen have to look at that big picture, and to neglect to do so is to sell ourselves short. I believe a plant works for us, the seedsmen. We are not working for it. But in that regard, a production plant is only capable of doing the work that we allow it to do. If we aren’t getting the separation expected from a machine, then that machine is either malfunctioning, not being applied correctly or something else within the production line is not in harmony with the rest of the plant. Only after identifying the true source of a prob- lem within the plant system can we then begin to correct it. I’ve learned that an Oliver gravity table has its own tells, like that ticking cup. If you pay attention, you can tell if you’re pushing your eccentric speed too far, or If You Listen, Your Equipment Has Something to Say DAVE MEANS, OLIVER MANUFACTURING FIELD SERVICE TECHNICIAN email@olivermanufacturing.com • olivermanufacturing.com if you’re getting too extreme with your side tilt. This requires a lot of skill, patience and practice on manual machines. Just the physical act of cranking an air adjust- ment, moving the side tilt, recording the positions and then repeating that process until you finally get the separation that you need can be real time consuming. Why are there less manual transmis- sion cars on the roads these days? That’s too much work. It’s the same thing with machines. We make machines that are highly automated because they’re efficient. The best part about automation isn’t that it makes your job easier. It’s that it makes the newest generation of the workforce more inclined to use it. It produces results more reliably while consuming less time and energy. And when we succeed, the efficiency of the entire plant improves. But I want to stress that more efficient tools do not negate the seedsman’s need to be in tune with their facility.