Tractor Seat Chemistry

     The profession of farmer requires many skills. One of those skills is in the proper mixing and application of chemicals. The word chemical has become somewhat of a bogeyman of our times. I assure you that a farmer knows his or her business just as well as you know yours.
     Chemical application is a simple form of chemistry. It involves knowing your substances, their effects and volumes. As with most forms of chemistry, you need a lab of sorts. This is how a farmer's looks.

     Like most of a farmer's life and livelihood it's far more open aired than most labs. The old truck is permanently on water duty. It's big green tank fills slowly from the tap but holds enough that it can empty into a sprayer (or anywhere else) quickly. It's even got a little pump to speed things up. Most of the volume inside a spray tank will be water.
     The sprayer, here, is a small orange one on the back of the tractor. It contains a small pump (powered by the hydraulic system of the tractor) that will agitate or mix the spray inside constantly and pump it out when the proper lever is turned. This sprayer has booms (the wide arms) and a nozzle for spraying at a distance.

     Depending on what kinds of weeds a farmer wants to deal with, he'll need different ingredients. Each chemical works in a different way and has a different concentration. So an applicator has to measure carefully. I was able to snap this picture somewhat mid-mixing so you can see one such measurement along with a wide variety of ingredients an applicator must know.

     An unfortunate part of weed control, is that if you want to do it correctly, you have to control all of the weeds. So this farmer is spending his time spraying roadsides. Common roadside weeds include: puncture vines, kochia, and cheatgrass so he'll have included the best chemicals for each. He covers the roadside with the boom and with the nozzle (in his hand up there) he gets the weeds in the ditch. A note: He's also spraying the asparagus, (remember yesterdays post?) so he'd tell you that today (and for quite a few days after) is not a good day to pick it.
     The reason for all this is that by controlling the weeds, a farmer significantly increases his output. Which means that there's more food and raw materials for the rest of the people to use and process. This is especially important as as (more and more all the time) all across the world the vast majority of people are provided for by a very small minority.