Intro: This is a GRDC podcast.

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Hilary Sims: Hi there, I'm Hilary Sims. With the ever-increasing cost of farming, getting bang for your herbicide buck is an important consideration when it comes to chemical handling and sprayer setup. In today's podcast, I hear from responsible chemical handling and spray application advocate, Chris Dunn, on how agronomists and growers can get good advice on chemical usage. Chris is an agronomist with Nutrien Ag based at Elmore in central Victoria. But first I spoke with Victorian grower, Richard Stecher. Richard seen the benefits of being informed on responsible chemical handling and correct sprayer setup, and he joins me now to share his experience. He starts off by describing his farming operation. Here's Richard.

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Richard Stecher: Our operation is quite unique in that we're spread out across a pretty broad area, Started about 20 years ago as a contractor and actually did quite a bit of spraying, early days contracting, and then later on went into share farming, then leasing, then eventually bought some of our country. We crop about 3500 hectares between Melbourne and Shepparton and run a beef cattle business and still do small amounts of contract work.

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Hilary Sims: So, Richard, tell me about how your approach to chemical handling has changed over time.

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Richard Stecher: Starting as a spray contractor and then leading into farming and having quite a bit of exposure to the application of chemical over the past 20 years. I think it's been important, particularly with some of the high risk areas that we spray in around towns and around grapes and vineyards around the Nagambie area and fringe areas around Melbourne. It's been important for us to not become complacent with our chemical application and evolve with that.

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Hilary Sims: And you did some spray training a couple of years ago. Tell me about that program.

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Richard Stecher: I actually did it myself in 2022 with Craig De, and in 2023 I sent two of my staff members there and it was mind blowing what I got out of that. And I think that's probably an example of this, you know, becoming complacent over time and doing the same thing and not probably having a good handle on the technology. And even right back to the basics with sprayer calibration and nozzle selection. And I think probably the biggest thing I got out of that was that these pieces of equipment can be a pretty large capital investment, but at the end of the day, they're only as good as the nozzle that's at the end of the boom. And having that setup right with speed and height and all of that. So I got a hell of a lot out of that.

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Hilary Sims: Richard, you mentioned some of it was mind blowing. What was some of the information that surprised you?

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Richard Stecher: Well, two things in particular. One was I was probably surprised the variation in droplet size across the range of nozzles in each size. So that's surprised me and how important it was. If your nozzle of choices in 025 and 025 is not just an 025, there's quite a selection in 025's that'll give you different results. One of our machines we've set up with two different 025's on it and they do quite different jobs. That's really the first thing. And the second thing was that after going to the course myself, I was probably hesitant to send staff there because I thought that some of this might make things more complicated for them than they need to be, but I was probably surprised that they got a lot out of it, and they still to this day, refer back to things that they learnt in that course that they may not have. They may have been a little bit overwhelmed on the day, but after the event, with a bit of time for it to sort of sink in and make sense, there's a lot of theory there that was discussed in the course that has now later gone back and formed good practice, I guess.

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Hilary Sims: And to finish up, what else did you take away from the course and implement on farm?

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Richard Stecher: On that first training that I did, Craig came out and he did, I guess, a custom visit to our particular machine, and we did a calibration and we did a nozzle selection. And it's not complicated maths to work this stuff out, but to do it properly but it'll often give you a different answer to what you have probably thought in your mind is the right thing to be doing. And we selected nozzles and obviously this was triggered by changing legislation around particle size, particularly in high risk areas and timing of the year. So that was the trigger for us to do the training. But what it taught us was that our sprayers could be better set up. And I believe that they are now as a result of that.

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Hilary Sims: My next guest is Chris Dunn. He's an agronomist with Nutrien Ag based in Elmore in Central Victoria. Chris interest in responsible chemical use started back in 2011, after a significant spray drift event affected a wide area of grapevines in the Elmore region. Since then, he's become a strong advocate for chemical safety and practical spray training. Like our previous guest, Richard, Chris has also benefited from the Spray Safe and Save courses run by Craig Day. To start off, Chris explains the spray drift events that brought the issue into focus. Here's Chris.

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Chris Dunn: Probably started back in 2011, but then it changed a couple of times. came into focus again in that sort of 2017, 2018 time with two chords, and then in that 2022 with paraquats and Group 14s and Overwatch visually showing up out of the paddock that it was applied in.

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Hilary Sims: And Chris, tell me about the significance of events like this and why it's such an area of interest for you.

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Chris Dunn: Over the last probably three or four years, through herbicide resistance, there's more times that we're putting boom sprays over paddocks now. We're doing more spraying now than we were 10-15 years ago, and we're doing a lot more double knocking, which are with quite visual burning products. So it really highlighted how far some of our spray droplets were going out of paddocks. That made us think, okay, what can we do to change this? We want to eliminate this or at least minimise it. Sometimes you don't know what's going wrong until you see it. It's quite visual. So it wasn't just those products that were moving, it was others. So again gave us another hard focus on nozzles and boom height, speed, those sorts of things. So they brought things into focus for us again. And we actually on the back of that ran 2023 and 2024 summers. We did practical spray training workshops again, because it had probably been five or so years since the last ones.

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Hilary Sims: So how would you describe responsible chemical use?

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Chris Dunn: Responsible chemical use for me is growers applying the right herbicides at the right time, with the right equipment, under the right weather conditions, in a safe manner to both themselves and to crops, pastures or anything else nearby. So we're just aiming to do a good job on what we're targeting, but also then not having what we're using leave the paddock.

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Hilary Sims: What are some of your practical tips that growers can implement on farm?

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Chris Dunn: There's been a reasonable take up of on farm weather stations. I've got growers that have, say, spread paddocks so they can see what conditions are like before getting there. All of my growers have handheld kestrel weather metres, so they're taking the in paddock weather data. And there's been a big improvement in growers use of personal protective equipment when they're filling up broom sprays. We've just really wanted to emphasise that, especially when there has been a generational change, when we're younger, we can all be guilty of thinking that we're bulletproof. We don't want false confidence or short term thinking to impact these people later in life. So we made a real effort to emphasise how important it is to spend the extra couple of minutes. Make sure that you've got the right personal protective equipment before starting your boom spray fill up jobs.

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Hilary Sims: And for agronomists that might be listening to this podcast, what recommendations or advice do you have for them around advocating for responsible chemical use?

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Chris Dunn: Being an agronomist is a relationship game, and you deal with people and families for a really long time. It's generational, so sometimes you feel like you can be a bit like your nagging mum talking to people about how to do things, but it's just about emphasising to these people that you're doing it for both their own good, but also the industry good. Sometimes it's also good to get a fresh voice in to talk about some of these things, because if it's someone that you've dealt with for a long time, you've probably said a lot of these things to them before. But getting in an expert in these areas, they connect with a different message or set in a different way. But I've also found that it's really upskilled me as well. So you don't come into the job being an expert. That is one of the great things about being an agronomist. It's continual learning and professional development, and you get a network of people that you know over the years that are experts in their field, that you can lean on and uses resources for your own growers so that they help make the right decisions and can critically analyse potential purchase or a change in nozzles and things like that, probably to a higher level than definitely I can do myself.

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Hilary Sims: And what can growers ask their agros to make sure they get good advice on responsible chemical use?

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Chris Dunn: Just asking about are the nozzles that I'm using appropriate for this job. We found after the 240 label changes in 2018 or 2019, that we just couldn't run with one set of nozzles in our boom sprays all year like what we used to. There was a bit of trial and error and engaging with spray application experts to find out what are going to be the most suitable nozzles for what times of year, and then even doing a little bit of ground truthing ourselves with different nozzles, different pressures with water sensitive paper, down through canopies, down through stubbles, talking about what spray quality should I be using, and then even engaging with some of the spray application experts that are around the country utilising some of the spray spray application resources, whether it's either through GRDC or Graingrowers, have some videos as well.

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Hilary Sims: Excellent. And just finally, Chris, what are your takeaway messages on this topic?

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Chis Dunn: I think my key messages are especially when you get a new either staff member or a family member coming on to the farm doing proper inductions, not just getting them in the boom spray and showing them something quickly. Having a formal spray plan that you've worked out to induct them with. And if that's something that you're not exactly sure of, engage with your agronomist or a spray application expert to do that with yourself. Keep your skills up to date with practical spray training whenever they're available. Getting growers to realise or understand how to predict those hazardous inversion conditions, and knowing when is a no spray time because they're conditions where you can get your spray drift going a really long way and impact people further than you can see. And also have a look at your nozzles if you haven't looked at them for a few years. Are they producing the right droplet spectrum for what you're using them for? We have herbicides that are so important to our industry that we just can't afford to lose them through poor practice, so thinking about that every time before you're about to go do a spray and realise the gravity so that we're not blasé.

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Hilary Sims: Chris, thanks very much for speaking with us today.

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Chris Dunn: No worries. Thanks for having me, Hilary.

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Hilary Sims: That was Nutrien Ag agronomist Chris Dunn and before him was grower Richard Stecher. More information on this topic can be found in the description box of this podcast or online at grdc.Com.Au I'm Hillary Sims and you've been listening to GRDC podcast.