Welcome back to the war against the weeds podcast. This is Sarah Lancaster, extension weed management specialist at Kansas State University, and on this fine afternoon recording time, I've got Dr Essman with me as a co host, hey Alyssa.
Hey Sarah.
And today we've got a couple of guests with us to chat about l-glufosinate. So our guests today are, I'm just going from the top of my screen to the bottom of my screen. Here we've got Liam Vincent and Lynn Justesen. So I think first up, we'll give Liam a chance to kind of introduce yourself, tell us about your position and kind of how you came to be in your current role with BASF.
Yeah, sure. So I'm Liam Vincent, serve as the technical marketing manager for liberty and liberty Ultra herbicide at BASF and been in this role for about four years. And the way I kind of describe the role is it's sort of the the intermediary of our research and development arm and the marketing or sales arm of the organization. So I get to be the the in between there and came to BASF after getting my master's in Weed Science at NC State and working a little bit in
extension. And then I had the opportunity to start at BASF. And so, you know, seven or so years later, here we are.
excellent. And Lynn, your turn tell us about what to do for UPL and kind of how you came to this spot in
How I came to the war on weeds? your career.
Yeah How did you get here? (laughs)
Yeah, so. Lynn Justesen, with UPL. I live in the flyover part of the world, just north of Sarah, a bit up in Nebraska, between Lincoln and Omaha. I've been with UPL about 10 years, 10, almost 11 years now, been in ag and retail, either from been everywhere, from retail, ag through distribution, seed sales, now manufacturing, and spent a fair amount of that time in the tech service part, been doing that. I think this will be my 35th summer of full time work on that
this summer. So got a couple of years, I don't know. 35 includes my last Scouting year, I guess. But been a been a long deal there I work. What I do for for UPL is I'm a tech service manager for them in the northern field crops, 104, and also do some special projects, and kind of help manage that, that team a little bit. But with that, what tech services for UPL is, is we're not quite development and we're not marketing. We're kind
of that, that in between. So as things like, like the L glufosinate molecule, or, you know, other molecules like, you know, we just launched a new 1am, a carbazon and intrava dx, as those come to market. We work with universities, we work with cooperators, and we're developing one, introducing it to the Ag Society in our ag environment. And then two, we also help prepare and get, get marketing and data assessment for for those same areas in order to be able to go out and
sell and market and position products. So again, a bit of, a bit of an in between deal, not either one or the other, but we get, we get to do a little bit of both. So kind of a fun, exciting we don't have specific, just herbicides, fungicides or anything like that. We're kind of asked to be a jack of all trades. So I guess I I always go back to my stance on all the stuff, or most of everything I do, Sarah and I have had these conversations before, is that we, I'm an agronomist first,
right? And I happen to work for a chemical company, so, so Yeah, do that, and we give an opportunity to do we're looking at an L glufosinate as well. So I guess that's what brings me here today.
So yep, wanted to get kind of two angles on this story. So all right, as we roll along through through our questions here, I guess first up for the listeners is we need to talk about what is L glufosinate, and how is it different than the regular or the older formulations of glufosinate? Liam? You want to take a first, first stab at that one?
Yeah, sure. I think, you know, with a lot of your questions today, Lynn and I may bounce, you know, bounce things back and forth. As far as our experience, I think, you know, especially the background on of it, on this topic, a lot of it's going to be the same, as far as the history of glufosinate. And it goes, you know, goes way back, and I
think, pretty early on in the development of. Glufosinate ammonium and bringing that product to the market, there were, they found out pretty quickly that, you know, there were two isomers involved for the glufosinate ammonium molecule, you know, the L isomer and the D isomer. And without going too far down a rabbit hole of real intense chemistry. You know, they found that, you know, the isomers were, were present, and that there was a very difficult, maybe a very
difficult at the at the time, way to separate them. And so they said, Well, we're gonna, you know, keep them together in what they're you know, what's become Liberty 280 and other products that are known as, you know, racemic glufosinate mixtures. And those racemic glufosinate mixtures, Liberty 280 included, contain L and D isomer so, you know, as far as you know, as far as I've understood it, that's, you know,
a little bit on the history there. But as far as liberty, Ultra and it, you know, it's active ingredient, you know, the the yellow isomer is herbicidally active. And there's always been, you know, like I said, this difficult, you know, sort of obstacle in the way of trying to get to what we have today is what we, you know, what's known as a resolved isomer of glufosinate. And that, that pathway of getting there is just as important as getting the product registered, in my
opinion. So that's in the technical terms. You're looking at the past of, you know, regular glufosinate as a racemic mixture. And then sort of the way that, you know, BASF is going, and, you know, sounds like UPL is going, you know, pursuing a resolved isomer of glufosinate with L glufosinate, or glufosinate p being the named active ingredient there.
I'll probably go in the weeds a little bit more maybe, if that's okay. I think the basis of it is that, I think the simplest terms for me, you know, if you look at history wise, we had a, you know, we've had several, several chemistries that we've had these, these racemic right? These, these isomers that are just inactive. Probably the one, the bigger one, is metallic core, right? We have this racemic it's inactive.
It carries a lot of weight. And then the, and then, and then the, you know, one, if you if you look at the what a chemistry company is going to try and do you're going to try and bring something out rapidly, right? As soon as you discover it, you need to figure out a way to get that and one figure out if it works. If it does, how fast do I bring it to market? And sometimes you give up some baggage to get there, right? And you give up some things to get there. And I really, I really
think that's what it is. So if you compare what the L glufosinate is compared to glufosinate, it's no different than what we've done with the we've done with metolachlor right? We have a racemic version, where we go out and there's, there's multiple ways, and I think we between, between BASF and UPL, we come at it a little bit different, but the end game is the same, right? The end game is, is we want a pure isomer, right? Or we're trying to get to it pure is near
impossible, right? I mean, if you break into half lives and parts per billion, we can never get it pure. But if you can get 90, 95% in that range of purity, you know, the whole system kind of wins on it, right? So, if we look at, if we look at things like just purely from, from us, logistic wise, whether it's BASF or or UPL, right? Either one of us, we get to transport half as
much, right? But all of a sudden it becomes more efficient. So instead of a tank holding, you know, 4000 4000 let's say a tank originally holds 12,000 acres, roughly a standard bulk tank that holds 12,000 acres, it now holds 20, maybe a bit more,
right? And it's the same space. So we become more efficient. If you look at some of the things, and I know in the down the road, we may get to some of the the EPA driven things and environmental, you know, the Endangered Species Act, and some of the fun, let's call it that is associated with those, if you think about those as well, and you put that with that, all of a sudden, now we're also putting half as much out, right? We're making half the application, and we've lost no efficacy in theory
with with what we're doing. I think the other nice benefit that I can roughly touch on and why it's different, and what, what we've seen with some of our data, is that by cleaning that up, we have less noise, right? You know, there are times where we we may have a little bit of crop response, right? Or there may be some places where we see some funky things happen with weeds, where we should have killed them, like we just
didn't, right? And it just, you just kind of scratch your head, and then, then, I mean, we go back to, well, all right, we did, did we have the right? Adjuvants. And then, okay, well, you have to be careful with adjuvants. And then, then, well, did we get the right amount of coverage? And was it wet long enough? And did it, did it penetrate the wheat long enough,
you know? And, you know, did we run, if we ran 15 gallons an acre, would we have been could we have killed the wheat if we got 20 and and you get through that, and then I think this to me, and again, this was the simplest term. Is that if you're reducing an isomer. And that's what the isomer is, right? If that's the leaf surface, you know, at that point when we had the isomer of that, this is a terrible impromptu half of that, if you know, if you can see that, maybe you can't, bam,
alright. So half of that, half of this, half, half of half of this white surface when you made that application, when you had a racemic version, half of that is hit with product that's inactive. It has to be. It's simply math, right? It's simply math. When you pull that racemic out and you take we're going to remove that. And now let's say we're at 90% and I know we'll play healthy in this. But what the heck? So there's a little
bit of a doubt that 90% in the corner, right? That 90% is the difference, to me, just sheer math, and just if you look at scatter charts and everything else math alone, it will be substantially better just because of the math, because every droplet is now 95% pure, not 50. We didn't. I mean, we don't talk about that before, but half of what we were spraying before was inactive. I mean, we and we don't talk about
it, right? We can talk about it now, and we can talk about all the other people have the inactive stuff, and we'll make sure we talk loud and proud about that, right? Ma'am, but not. But up till then, we didn't talk about it because we didn't have a choice. Now we have a choice. Let's get something that has more on it for late that's at least. That's my take on. And if I'm all wet, then say, so I'm good with that too.
No, it's an exciting thing. It really is. When you look at the past, there's just a lot of, you know, glufosinate, in the formulation, just a lot of kind of dead weight. So to say, and certainly, yeah, all of the points that you made on easier handling are are very valid, absolutely.
So one curiosity question, and I don't know it might be too technical of a question to ask, and it also might be too too legal of a question to ask, but can you give, like, a synopsis or an overview of how the chemistry works to purify it. Are you just, like, adding another reactant somewhere? Is it some sort of filtration process, like, help us, help us get an idea of what happens, like, kind of in the black box behind the jug or the tote,
I'll go. I think we're okay saying this. I don't know. We'll find out I have a job next week not I'll be open to you, Sarah, at least from my standpoint, what, what we've done with it those is a filtration right? It's a, it's an ultra filtration system where you're just basically trying to filter it and remove it. And that's tremendously simplistic,
but it's ours. Is really a filtration system, and it's trying to get it filtered out to, we talk about 95% pure, and that's where we number out at it simple as that, simply filtration, very consistent, very easy to do and replicate from our standpoint. And now that I won't, I won't speak for anybody else's product on that for sure. So,
yeah, I mean, I think Lynn, you mentioned it at the top. You know, there's a couple different ways of getting there, but we ultimately get to this, you know, relatively the same end product, right? And I think that that's, you know, is an important thing to to point out. But, yeah, I mean, as far
as you know, how does, how do we get there with Liberty Ultra? So we've made it pretty clear in our labeling and our marketing on easier handling that like without a process of getting here, there is no, you know, there is no liberty Ultra, right? And that process for us is glufosinate technology, which is our main in our manufacturing process, we essentially transform those D isomers and make them l isomer So again, there's, there's a lot of chemistry behind that that we'll
get into. But ultimately, yes, you know, you're taking the D isomer that's present in the AI and just making it l isomer.
So, so it sounds like yours Liam is more of a chemical reaction, wet chemistry, and then yours is more of a physical separation on a very micro scale.
Yeah, very Yeah. And mine might be a bit over simplistic, but simplistically, yeah, it's a, it's, it's substantially smaller than a 50 mesh screen.
Okay, okay, so next things, I guess, to think about a little bit. Are we ready to. Dive into the fun stuff Lynn, if you think this is fun, I'd hate to see your idea of a bad time here. So go ahead.
No fire away. I'm I'm good with it. Dig into the weeds and and, yeah, get in them as fun as you want. Yeah.
So this has been the first product that has been kind of fully approved with what we anticipate to be the template for the new label requirements and restrictions going forward. So how does especially, okay, so we've got one product that's in the marketplace. We've got Lynn, you guys have got yours coming right behind.
behind it, yeah, yeah. We should probably mention that, though the Liberty Ultra is labeled inner line mega is not we're pending. We're substantially close. And I think we will find that much of the next topic, you know, if we're going to talk about the ESA Endangered Species Act, things, you find that this is, this will be the second product that will have those, those tagged to them because of the new registration on it, and be considered a new a new new chemistry, technically,
right? Yep. So that's a tricky thing. So just a little side note on this. This, yes, they deal is wild, right? So the this L-glufosinate thing falls under that, right? And as you know, Sarah, we just got another chemistry, which I already mentioned it and shamelessly plugged it prior. I won't shamelessly plug it again, but we brought it. But both of those chemistries already in the market. Technically, just one
has never been introduced into the corn market. We didn't have to fall into that because they were already registered, right? Whereas this one is that the crazy part is what we just talked about, in the in the in the reduction of the isomer in it, it's the same isomer doing the same things, yet it's different, right? They consider it different, and we fall under a different set of standards, which just, I don't get it. I mean, it, it's the same that the L isomer was doing all the work
before, right? We just made it more we reduced the rate. We made it more intense in a lot of ways. I think both molecules, both, both the ways we got there, both UPL and BSF, we've made it better, right? But, I mean, so sorry, I got that all the way. I don't again. It's again, not my goat, not my county fair, but I just don't, I don't understand how they decide what is and what isn't different, right?
Well, I mean, Alyssa, have you been talking about this in the extension circuit, this one or two, right? What is the, what is the in your county fair? What are your Yeah, just about with regard to Yeah, yeah, the new labeling, the new record keeping, what's, what's been the conversation in the countryside?
Lot of blank stares, a lot of like how. You know, I think a lot of it goes just back to record keeping, and it's just another layer of stuff you have to do ahead of the growing season, and websites to check. And some of the things we talk about are, you know, how easy is the website to use? If you have internet access, where do you go to check these things? You know, it's a, it's a it's a process. It's not just look at the label for an update. It's the label says you also have to
check this website within six months, and and on and on. The other question we get, and we've, I know we've talked about this on those ESA episodes, but is what is, in terms of actual follow through, in terms of folks coming out and like, what's the compliance look like, and in terms of, like, the ODA inspections, those sort of things, what does that enforcement? That's the word I was looking for enforcement. What's that gonna look like? So that's kind of where the
questions have been on our end. What about you? Sarah, yeah,
I would say the same. It ranges the reaction in the room ranges from, yeah, blank, like, feel like Charlie Brown's teacher, a little bit to kind of, I mean, the reason I asked this question then is because I was even through the the technology, I was getting the frustration vibes there. And, I mean, I think there's a lot of just frustration vibes about it, even though, you know, we can say these labels are
going to be easy to meet the requirements. It's just more things that they've got to figure out how to keep track of and take the time to to nail down. How does that align with y'all messaging? As you move forward with marketing,
everything about the herbicide strategy seems to be a way that the EPA has come to an agreement with some folks that tend to sue them after every registration that they made prior to this, and this was, this was a way to satisfy the Endangered Species Act going back many decades, and then just the standard that they were being held to by these
Organizations. And, you know, I think it's important that you know it is, it is part of our, our labels going forward, you know, for new, new actives, which, like Lynn said, you know that the EPA is, they're considering l-glufosinate or glufosinate P ammonium, to be that that new, a new active ingredient, classifying it as such. And so it's part of the label. But, you know, I think, in terms of talking to customers about it like if, if our intent is to show them that it is
somewhat simple to comply with, it is change. Nobody likes change. I mean, I didn't want to have to go through this and train our sales team or our tech service team, believe me, I didn't want to do that as part of it, right? It's just part of where we're at and part of how the EPA is going to push push products forward. And I mean, for better or for worse, this is a template that's working for them. I think that they're able
to follow this path to get other products registered. Because I think, you know, Lynn, you could probably share this frustration. You know, we were waiting a long time. We're waiting a long time for these products to make progress within their system and then to get registration. I mean, holy cow, it just takes a long time. So hopefully this, this process figured out, speeds it along.
Well, yeah, I Yeah. I think not only is it a long time and you hinted on it, I'll, I'll say it maybe a little more bluntly, you give things up. I mean that because they have all the power in it. And you're x down the race, and X ways down the road, and you're like, if we miss another season, it's the multiplier. Is this, right? We move we lose this much more. Plus, the clock is still ticking on the patents, right,
and you still can't sell it, and they're still accumulating. I mean, there's cost of money, there's cost of continued moving forward, and continued testing and all those things. So that's a problem to me, number one with that that you give things up, and I don't know what BASF did. I know kind of what we've had to do to get to where we can get it registered. And then you go back and ask for other things back, right? You go back, and then you
go right back to a re registration project. So go back and get what they made you take away anyway, which is, again, more mind blowing things. And they come really quickly once you have a registration again, things that, things that make you scratch your head, I think so. I've had a bit of both. I'm glad to hear both. Listen and Sarah, hear yours out there. And what, what I have heard is, is a now, what right? What's this now? What more of a and that goes from the shrug of the
shoulders like to, why are we have another one of these? Well, okay, so I work, I work a lot with, with the National aerial the interplay the National Agricultural Applicators Association, right? And they've had to do a fair amount of this because aerial applications have been in these esas, and that's called their past program, right? So they've had to deal with this before. So that was actually I went with Scott, kind of their head, their head, their head, regulatory guy on. He
goes, Oh, it's not that big. And he walked me through some of it. And it's honestly the, the biggest turn this whole thing is how complex they make it sound, right? They have over, I mean, and that's, I guess that's just maybe, that's just maybe, that's their way. They make it sound really complex. And then you get to the very end, and Liam, I'm sure you've given these, I've given lots of these presentations. You get all the way, and you get 45 minutes of people just going, what is going
on? Or 30 minutes, why are we doing this is ridiculous. You get to them and you go, here's the things you do. And they go, I'm already doing those. You pass. Okay. What about the runoff? That one's probably easier. Here's the thing you're doing. You passed. What do I need to do with that? Write it down when, right now, right go in, right now, open up the map and find out if you are in a zone that has additional has additional restrictions, which we have almost none here, right?
There's a few spots like, I think I looked up the other day, around the pedal Creek, around that there's some bug that there's in Nebraska too, that you have to be careful this bug, right? Which, okay, that's great. We'll be careful the bug, but we're not spraying that, so we're probably okay. But anyway, you have to be mindful of that. But you get beyond that, and you're like, we're kind of already doing this, right? We're kind of already doing this. At your point, what are we going to
do? What's the enforcement look like, from what I've talked to and I would be, I'd be curious to hear Liam's in you all comments on this too? What we understand unless there's trouble, or there's something that's turned in, or there's a complaint, you probably write these down, you track records, and it probably never matters, but you still have to do it that I at least that's what I'm hearing anyway.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean my messaging to most of my guys right, wrong or otherwise, I have a meeting with KDA on Thursday, and then I guess they'll, they'll tell me if I'm wrong. But my messaging has basically been that, yeah, and I want you to have your rear end covered by proving that you have X number of points. In this case, it's three. So that's pretty easy for most of our growers, and we can kind of get into the details a little bit more, maybe. But if you've got
your points, just document. Print that spreadsheet out that the EPA provides. Just print that, put it in your records, save it on your files. However you're doing that, make sure you printed that. You checked the use limitation area website. Print that, and you probably never have to look at it again, you know, for the rest, at least for the rest of the season, unless something goes sideways somewhere else, and now they've
got an excuse to or a reason to make an investigation. And that's another thing that you could be out of compliance with. I I view it like seat belt loss, right? You're not gonna in Kansas, you're not gonna get a ticket if they see you not wearing your seat belt. But pull you over for speeding. You'll have a seat belt violate, violation. So
I think it's, yeah, it's just a matter of coverage. I mean it. And again, you get back to, I need my points, or I need to get, you know? I mean, I think that neat. The great part is, is that whether it's inner line mega or or Liberty Ultra, I mean, you get what is a point credit just because of the reduced use rate of the product, right? Because how we label it, and we, we're smart about labeling work, we've reduced the use rate by 40% because we have a max use rate
that's clear up here somewhere, right? But we're actually using it here. So we get a point for that, right? We get, there's points you can gather. I mean, there's lots of things that are, well, it's not, not hard to get to it. It's, I think it's just a matter of making it simple. I'm hopeful at some point somebody has a website that a grower can go in and upload his stuff and just track it and log it. Or a retailer, I assume there's probably some places out there doing it, but, you know, little
things like you just the erosion, runoff things. What is, I mean, it's easy to figure out. It tells you exactly what you have to have, right? It tells you the exact points. There's not any guesswork in it. You can drop your pin where you're at and it says you're this, right? It's a matter of, I think the first year, this year, if you're going to use the use the use the product, I think the first year building all this is the
hardest. But once you have it built, it's a matter of going in and backing up and validate, make sure it's nothing's changed. Make sure there's not been, what are they called, with the Pumas? Yeah, there's nothing. Nothing has showed up on that. If nothing showed up, it's the same. I did it. I checked the box. You did it again. Here's my points. Everything's the same. It's now 26 not 25 I mean, I think it becomes, I think, I think it's end of the year, you know, it's
end of the year planning paperwork. You know, maybe when you sit down with your agronomist, or your or you have a crop, a crop Scout, or or whoever you sit down, you just make this. This is part of our planning, and it takes you, once you have everything in it's stuff.
I was in a meeting last week with some consultants from Texas, and one of the, you know, we're talking about this, as you know, to to a consultant audience of saying, this is, this is added value for you. You can help your folks work through any confusion or questions that they have on this product,
product, and it's relatively simple. Guys, you know, it's, it's easy to get your points really, just said, you know, guys, this is, this is a way for you to to walk somebody through, get them comfortable with this, because this is the way of the future. It's, it's coming for other herbicides. It's coming for insecticides. Coming for fungicides. So, you know, being able to get this right on the first one, I think, for, you
know, for l-glufosinate is a good thing. And on the documenting piece of it, you know, Dr Stanley Culpepper has been a huge advocate. And the reason a huge reason, not the reason, but a huge reason that this strategy and the way that we have to work with the tools that we do have, it's workable because of all the work that he's done, and during a webinar, he discussed with some of our customers, Just that you can
batch fields together. So if a grower is operating on 3000 acres, 4000 acres, whatever, but they're all sort of managed the same, you know, they, they conventional, till everything, everything is in a is surrounded by, you know, wooden, you know, by a strip of woodland or something, you know, that it's a non irrigated field, all of these different things that contribute to the practices that they do to raise a cotton or, you know, or corn crop, or something that you can batch all
that together for, you know, whatever county you're in and say, Okay, well, for so and so County in Georgia, I've got these 2000 acres I'm managing a certain way, and you just, you keep that paperwork, you change it when you need to, to make sure that there's that you've incorporated any possible changes. But, you know, yeah, as far as the documenting thing, I understand that's a step that people there's like, okay, it's one more thing. But again, this is coming for other products too.
No, I just agree with what you both kind of mentioned here, and that's one thing I've been talking about, is, I think part of the concern leading up to this sort of rollout was so much uncertainty around how intense it was going to be and and it's a lot more straightforward than I think maybe we were anticipating. It is, it seems more of a record keeping situation. And so if there's any positive I think, I think that's it,
yeah. And I'd also add too, it's one of those things you start looking into what's required now, versus with this new product that you know that for us, we're launching in 2025 with Liberty Ultra, as opposed to some of the measures that had to be practiced in the past, like when you think about sprint, you think about drift, that has to be managed within enlist one today, they've got a 30 foot buffer, and some things
they got to do and points they got to meet. Doesn't get talked about that much, but they do. They gotta check the endangered species. When we had Dicamba, you had to check the endangered species. You had to manage your drift, obviously. So these are not new things. It's just potentially it's a new thing to a tool that didn't have these parameters on it beforehand.
Most of the pool is, if you went looked or read off or wrote off of Dicamba, drift, right? I mean, that's what most of them are, in relationship to that we would have any kind of a a deal. And you've got to get to Michigan and Minnesota, and there's some other kind of hot spots where people got crazy, right? And those things. But again, some of those buffers already in there. But simple things like run your booms at the height they're supposed to run, it's and you
use a coarse droplet, right? Or you use a medium droplet. You can reduce your your 50 foot now becomes 25 right? And then you put a, you put a, you put the right drift additive, right, the the drift reduction agent in there. And you take another 15% off, and now you, it's not, not 15 off of 50 or now it's 60 or 35% off. So you're 50, you know, I mean, you can get it whittled down to, it's not that much, right? It's a field. It's a it's
a grass buffer on the side of your field. Again, it's just, it's, it's making us be very, more tactile about how we do it and that. And I think that's really it. It's just making us more aware of it. And, like, like, you know, Liam said on that, many of these things are already in place. We just didn't, kind of, maybe we weren't paying enough attention, right? But I, again, I don't want, I don't want to poo, poo it, but I don't want you to blow your head up or blow, you know,
it's going to be the end of the world either. I don't, I just, I don't see it in either one of those two. I think if you do your work and it's pre work, and you get all your things done, I mean, and to your point, if you have the data, and there's something that comes up and you say, No, I have my three points. I actually have six points for my, for my for my runoff, my drift reduction was down to two foot, right? I mean, it's no it's five. It's either five or zero, because everything rounds
to the fifth to the five right, either five foot or zero. You round out where you're at. You have the applicator on your on your you know, if you have any kind of a a mapping deal, you now have tracking time. Everything is done. If you list what you put in there, again, just a little bit of due diligence. And you may not even have to ever write anything down, just enter thing in, log it, run it into a cloud, and you're set.
Yeah. I mean, I know my anxiety level about this decreased from '23 to '24 and it went down significantly from' 24 to '25.
it was pretty spooky. The things they were talking about, if there was a they were, I mean, you they were talking about that was in is that Arkansas, there was a bumblebee, a specific Bumblebee in Arkansas that had, that was an endangered species, that it's home range. They somebody had established this five mile radius, right? So if you were then five miles of that, you're like, Okay, that's not that bad,
right? Well, and this is some of the aerial my aerial buddies telling me this so and, but it wasn't that then it was, if there was a tree that was hollow, that possibly could be a home, then that could be part of its range. And all of a sudden you have to go to that. And it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and again, those that was the '23 stuff, I think maybe you're talking about, you know. Era that it that was spooky. And I think we've got, I know how, but
somehow we got some common sense built into it. So that's the good news.
So I was curious. I mean, we've kind of tiptoed around it, but how did this whole, I mean, like you said, Liam 2,4-D and dicamba, over the top 2,4-D and over the top dicamba they both had these buffer requirements and some extra, you know, point systems and things like that that we talked about with folks. But having this be kind of the the template for things going forward, in terms of the herbicide strategy proposal, you know, how did that change the registration process for you guys?
You know, yeah, I mean, it was just slow, right? I mean, it just, it slowed everything down, you know, you you thought that, you know, you might be making some, some progress, and just not hearing anything. And then you start to, you know, you get further and further down the road, and you
realize, well, we really haven't made any progress. I think there was some waiting that needed to happen on the EPA side, because I think that they are looking to ground everything in defensible work that they can document, if, if they're ever sued for registration and finding something, finding a process they can move through quickly and defend, was their ultimate goal, and I think it took a long time, but at the same time, they're working with a significantly fewer number of
people than they've ever, you know, really had to work with in their history to, you know, kind of overcome this really large obstacle that was in their way of these really, really well financed and capable organizations are of litigating against them for for any registration. And so while it, while it definitely made my life more difficult and slowed down the progress for a lot of products, they had to do this in my, in my view, to to go forward.
Mean, it's not good for any of us when the federal government gets sued if you're paying taxes.
Well, I think, I think maybe the so this is the, this would be more the agronomist or than the than the employee, though, and then I guess is what I'll call this. And this is with with gray hair, comes the want to and the desire to do some advocacy things, right? And I think that's, I think that's a bit of what we need to take with a grain of salt here, right? Is that I think part of the reason this is this got more pointed, was because we didn't pay attention
to some of those other things, right? We didn't, we didn't heed warnings. And I'm going to go at the Dicamba stuff, right? Don't worry about it. It'll be fine. I'll just spray. I'll just do this. And we we killed, in my humble opinion, this is not upls. In my humble opinion, we killed oak trees and trees that we shouldn't have. We had off target movement that we probably shouldn't right, because we didn't eat and we didn't do some of the things we should have. We thought it would be okay. It
wasn't right. And there's, again, to Liam's point, there are people that are well funded and have the spare time, it turns out, to go chase every one of these rabbits down, right? So I look at this as, yeah, I this is a bit of penance for our sins of the past, and those sins of the past, we need to be a bit more judicious. And if you do a few things right, it not only covers the EPA, but which, as much as we complain about them, we still have to work with them. So we'd like them to be happy
and not get sued. And if they and we can help them cover their ass a little bit. We'd like ours covered, and we'd like to cover our growers and our customers too. And I think this is a way for all of us to do that, with a little bit of language, right?
It will, if you ever get in an incident to what you were talking about, if we ever get into a space where somebody it will happen, somebody's going to there's going to be a complaint, it will go to the state, and the state will go to the Fed, and it will roll up to this, and they'll say, Well, yeah, this was l-glufosinate. Okay, then they just go, Yeah, I have my paperwork here. Here's when I applied it, here's where I checked it last February. And this was late on last March, 10.
I went and I did this. And I had, not only three, I had six of my drift mitigations. My drift mitigation, my buffer, was five foot, as you can see by my sprayed records, by my swapping I was five foot off the edge of the field. I think I'm covered, then they will go, Okay, thank you and move on, right? I mean, I think that's what it is. I mean it I think this is that ounce of prevention, right? I
mean, that's what we're looking for, right? That scenario that you described is kind of the goal. Yeah.
Yeah, it's just, it's still right thing to do. It's a pain. The right thing to do usually isn't easy. So let's just, let's do the right thing. Because again, just, we've, we've all discussed to this point, this isn't the last one. There's more coming. I mean, there, I don't think there'll be less regulation, so
it'll be okay. I've been telling my folks this is a good one to get your, you know, practice like you've got the training wheels, because this is pretty low bar to hit.
Yeah, you're doing it on one product right now, right? Yep, yeah, yeah, one product that's got a pretty low, low requirement. So, yeah.
um, Alyssa, what other questions did you have anything that you think we we didn't hit like we should have.
I guess I'm just thinking of a couple questions here that I think growers might ask when it comes to these products. Specifically. One would be, is this supposed to be a replacement? Are all Liberty products? They're going to be an option going forward. And then other things, they'll probably, you know, we'll probably get questions about our price and efficacy in relation to those other products.
Hmm, wow.
they're not one to jump on Those.
you want to ask in terms about price, it's, it's something I keep my head out of on purpose.
I don't, I hide behind the shield of agronomy. I'll be very honest, that's my line. Shield of agronomy is right here, and not I would, I would say this. I would be it's, it's a premium product at a less price that's shown some advantages on some of our toughest to control weed species. There will probably be a little bit of a premium ask
for that. It would only be fair to because it is new technology that it honestly it's much easier to make your Endangered Species Act with this right or other things that may be in the wings. This one will help you make those make it a bit easier.
Our focus at UPL will be to transition to this for the reasons we talked about before efficiency, not only in the field, but transportation, storage, I mean, all those extra things, you know, we I don't, and I don't think of this very much, but I had this brought up to us this summer, we were doing some training in North Dakota, and brought up and how big of a deal it was that, you know, if you're, if you're a 55% use rate, that means I've extended how big my you know, I'm
carrying around a 250 or I carry around two, 250 I carry 500 with me. I can now spread 1000 acres in a day and not have to go get product. That's huge. And I'm like, they're like, Oh, that's a big deal. I was like, well, we might be going 70 miles one way. Okay, that is a big deal. Then, right? That that's, that's huge. So, you know, I think things like that make sense. I think in some of the efficiencies and the other things we get, we're
getting with these products. I mean, why wouldn't we? Will they be available? Yeah, there'll be lots of people that have that stuff available. But I think I'd take the good stuff that showed the advanced improvements and advanced efficiency. To me, I still like dead weeds Absolutely.
You're all strategy the same. Liam, I mean, because my my understanding is that Liberty 280 is going to go away.
So we'll, in this year, stop producing liberty 280 and and make a full full swing to transitioning into and producing L-glufosinate or Liberty Ultra. You know, of course, stuff lingers in the channel i I'm surprised every year by the totes that get pulled out of the back corners of a warehouse. And people ask, Can I spray this? And so that'll happen for for us, for manufacturing, yeah, we'll make a full transition here into Liberty Ultra
I guess the other piece of that then would be the patent protection, right? There's going to be a period of time before a lot of the, I guess, generic labels will be able to have access to this technology, right? So, so the the mixture will still be in the marketplace in that capacity for a period of time, right?
Yeah, I think there's a good, good, long life for these, course, you know like that, that that clock ticks begins to tick when you submit. You know your registration right?
Yeah, it's already ticked for a few years. So it's a nice, long one, but we waited another two years, by most all standards, another 24 months to get to where hope to be.
my hope, and I think, you know my, Im not gotta speak for for you or for UPL, but you know my hope and for BASF too, is that, that we can steward this technology to continue to work for several years, right? You know. The the advent of new, new active ingredients. Yeah, that's a tough one. And there it's not, it's not getting any easier. You know, there's been a long drought, right, in new modes of
action and such. And with the Dicamba vacature, we're looking at two main knock down herb sides, right and, and so I hope that in the you know, we've we know that there's a lot of, you know, generic glufosinate out there, you know, Lynn, that's probably something you, you're, you're very aware of, is just, you know what, what products are going for. And just, you know, registrations come in all the time of a new company that wants to sell some glufosinate and it's, it's every month, it seems
like, Yeah, everybody can put a formulation together. So yeah, I think stewarding It is super important. Yeah,
yeah. I Yeah. I think, I think the stewarding is going to be as big. I think that's it, as much as anything with this is that there's not a lot of new things coming, right? And and this one incrementally gets us better, but it's back to what am I doing to manage it before and after I spray this? This isn't the end all be, all right? This isn't the magic bullet. This isn't something that does everything. A really robust, in my opinion, a robust tree that could start to fall
before. Quite honestly, if you really want to maximize what you're up to, I think you go through, you make your Spring application, you come through with a with an aggressive, timely, aggressive, driven on days not leave height or stages, with a with an L glufosinate a product with an extended with some sort of an extension of your residual control added to that, and try and get canopy closure as fast as you can,
right? And if you have something come back out, I mean, I've, I know we've heard this a lot, and again, it's easy to do when you don't, you're not at the turn row with the checkbook. The Zero Tolerance is part of what we have to really start looking for and aiming for, and I think that's possible, or to get very close to it, but you have to be judicious. And I don't think you can lay in enough that, again, the easiest way to kill is one
we never speak, right? And then I think this is part of that, and and any of the and either one of these two in use patterns, if I can, from our standpoint, it's 28 days. You come out of this 28 days, it's not it's not three inch weeds. It's 28 days. I don't care what your weeds are. I don't care how tall they are. If it's 28 days, I know I'm in the range I can kill, and I can kill the hell out of them, and I can get them all the way to the ground, right? There's not enough leaves
for me that I can't get them. Even if you do some other things not quite right? We can still work through them again. It buys this window, buys this time. I think those sort of, I know that's a bit a bit different than IPM says, see them, find them, identify them, get them at the right height and kill them. We're not that fast, right? If this thing, we can't miss, right? I mean, that's the robust pre, you should target 20 in my again, these are all just line opinion. And from what I've seen
it if, if you want to, if our target is always 28 days. Post, and Sarah has seen our, seen our when our, when our protocols come, it's 28 days. I don't care. It's 28 days. Don't care how big it is. Don't I want 28 days. But when you spray it at 28 days, it's even if, even if it's there. And she goes out, and at 28 days, it rains for three days. We're now at 31 days. Wow, that's too windy, and she can't spray it right. Well, now we're at 35 days. And that's why we mentioned that before,
and I saw Liam nod his head, a robust pre. Is why we do that. I don't want my pre to diet 28 days. I want my pre to diet 50 days, and I'm still going to spray at 28 days. Because I don't ever want a gap. I don't ever want something to I don't ever want to look at a weed and go, boy, I don't know if I can kill that one. I want to look at everyone and go, this is a this is done right? Or to have a grower. Best Day of My Life is when a grower or a cooperator comes in, he says, I don't know.
I'm not sure why I'm spraying this. That's the perfect day to spray it, right?
We're retraining a lot of old habits.
Well, it? It? I I've lived all the way through this cycle, Sarah, and I don't think there's probably anybody else here that will match that I lived through when we didn't have any of these, right? The the biggest armor, and the biggest one in my armor was when I first started. I was there when pursuit started. Right? Classic pinnacle, you know, ultra Blazer was a pretty hot deal at that point, then this, this, this new pentamethyl and this prowl deal showed up, and
that was, What do you mean? I don't have to work it in. Well, it's like trapline, but you don't work it in and, and I've seen lots of those where we did lots of robust things, did very timely posts, and then, you know, you followed up and did, there's a fair amount of roguing that still went on at that point to clean Fields up. So we got completely away from all that.
We've lost our marbles for a few years. We're we've dug most of our way back to that, and we're using most of the chemistries we use them, which is wonderful, because I know how to use most of those. So it's worked its way around so but yeah, it's just, and I know that's a hard one, and I know that's not it again. It's it's not easy to to make all those because we want the easy button where we just spray it once or twice and we're all
done. But I don't think that's realistic in phase. So plus, as you know, as Liam said, if we want to keep this technology alive for 510, 1520, years, we can't be silly like that. You have to be very, very specific and very pointed, so we'll get there.
Yeah, one of the things I've been mentioning a lot is, as far as stewardship of glufosinate goes, is, how can we change people's mindsets about their post emergence application? How can we set up post emergence applications for success by using a robust pre so that we have fewer individuals that we spray every year. You know, these pres are phenomenal, right? That they control so many individuals that we never see
come up. And the fact is, some people never get to see the impact of that, because they've never, I mean, they've, they've see their field, and they see, you know, if they don't use a pre or, you know, something kept them out of the field, and so they go into a total post situation. But, man, it's incredible. The amount of selection pressure we can, we can relieve by using those pres and reducing, I mean, on an acre basis, millions of fewer individual weeds being sprayed every year. So, yeah,
incredible. All right, gentlemen, any final thoughts before I ask you to point our listeners to additional resources.
Thank you. Thank you for the time. Thanks for the invite. I truly appreciate it. Thank you for the time.
So yeah, thank you. We
were excited to get you guys on so and talk about some new technology. Lee and Lynn, do you guys have any websites or social media channels that you want to point our listeners to.
I just standard UPL, dash ltd.com, and pick the United States as your country. And come find your rep. Come find the products all listed there.
Yeah. And for me, I'd say go to Liberty Ultra herbicide.com to find out more about Liberty Ultra
Very good. Well, thank you again, guys for joining us today. And you know we're thankful for the listeners and our funding source from the north central IPM center. And I guess we will shut this down for today and see everyone again next time. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the war against weeds podcast. We appreciate support from the north central Integrated Pest Management Center and the collaboration with the Crop
Protection Network. At crop protection network.org, you can find this podcast, other podcasts, and a variety of other pest management resources.