A Risk Management Perspective on Integrated Weed Management

Abstract The variability inherent in agriculture influences many crop production decisions made by farmers, including weed management. This paper addresses how farmers perceive the variability, or risk, associated with integrated weed management systems in terms of yield, economic returns, and time and labor management. This paper addresses how key biological time constraints such as periodicity of weed emergence, rate of crop growth and development, and critical periods of weed control can influence the outcome of integrated weed management systems. A key component to developing successful integrated weed management systems lies in the ability of the crop producer to align individual time and labor management issues with existing biological time constraints.