April 30, 2025 • 53 mins
This week on the War Against Weeds Podcast we have two guests on to talk about L-glufosinate. They talk about the Liberty Ultra label and how the ESA (Endangered Species Act) has influenced this new label. Our guests are Liam Vincent a technical marketing manager for BASF, and Lynn Justesen a technical services lead with UPL.
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Episode Transcript
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Sarah Lancaster (00:06):
Welcome back to the war against the weeds
podcast. This is SarahLancaster, extension weed
management specialist at KansasState University, and on this
fine afternoon recording time,I've got Dr Essman with me as a
co host, hey Alyssa.
Alyssa Essman (00:21):
Hey Sarah.
Sarah Lancaster (00:23):
And today we've got a couple of guests with us
to chat about l-glufosinate. Soour guests today are, I'm just
going from the top of my screento the bottom of my screen. Here
we've got Liam Vincent and LynnJustesen. So I think first up,
we'll give Liam a chance to kindof introduce yourself, tell us
(00:44):
about your position and kind ofhow you came to be in your
current role with BASF.
Liam Vincent (00:49):
Yeah, sure. So I'm Liam Vincent, serve as the
technical marketing manager forliberty and liberty Ultra
herbicide at BASF and been inthis role for about four years.
And the way I kind of describethe role is it's sort of the the
intermediary of our research anddevelopment arm and the
(01:10):
marketing or sales arm of theorganization. So I get to be the
the in between there and came toBASF after getting my master's
in Weed Science at NC State andworking a little bit in
extension. And then I had theopportunity to start at BASF.
And so, you know, seven or soyears later, here we are.
Sarah Lancaster (01:35):
excellent. And Lynn, your turn tell us about
what to do for UPL and kind ofhow you came to this spot in
Lynn Justesen (01:44):
How I came to the war on weeds?
your career.
Sarah Lancaster (01:46):
Yeah How did you get here? (laughs)
Lynn Justesen (01:49):
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 andOmaha. I've been with UPL about
10 years, 10, almost 11 yearsnow, been in ag and retail,
either from been everywhere,from retail, ag through
distribution, seed sales, nowmanufacturing, and spent a fair
(02:11):
amount of that time in the techservice part, been doing that. I
think this will be my 35thsummer of full time work on that
this summer. So got a couple ofyears, 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 forUPL is I'm a tech service
(02:31):
manager for them in the northernfield crops, 104, and also do
some special projects, and kindof help manage that, that team a
little bit. But with that, whattech services for UPL is, is
we're not quite development andwe're not marketing. We're kind
of that, that in between. So asthings like, like the L
(02:52):
glufosinate molecule, or, youknow, other molecules like, you
know, we just launched a new1am, a carbazon and intrava dx,
as those come to market. We workwith universities, we work with
cooperators, and we'redeveloping one, introducing it
to the Ag Society in our agenvironment. And then two, we
also help prepare and get, getmarketing and data assessment
(03:15):
for for those same areas inorder to be able to go out and
sell and market and positionproducts. So again, a bit of, a
bit of an in between deal, noteither one or the other, but we
get, we get to do a little bitof both. So kind of a fun,
exciting we don't have specific,just herbicides, fungicides or
(03:35):
anything like that. We're kindof asked to be a jack of all
trades. So I guess I I always goback to my stance on all the
stuff, or most of everything Ido, Sarah and I have had these
conversations before, is thatwe, I'm an agronomist first,
right? And I happen to work fora chemical company, so, so Yeah,
(03:56):
do that, and we give anopportunity to do we're looking
at an L glufosinate as well. SoI guess that's what brings me
here today.
Sarah Lancaster (04:05):
So yep, wanted to get kind of two angles on
this story. So all right, as weroll along through through our
questions here, I guess first upfor the listeners is we need to
talk about what is Lglufosinate, and how is it
different than the regular orthe older formulations of
(04:27):
glufosinate? Liam? You want totake a first, first stab at that
one?
Liam Vincent (04:33):
Yeah, sure. I think, you know, with a lot of
your questions today, Lynn and Imay bounce, you know, bounce
things back and forth. As far asour experience, I think, you
know, especially the backgroundon of it, on this topic, a lot
of it's going to be the same, asfar as the history of
glufosinate. And it goes, youknow, goes way back, and I
(04:57):
think, pretty early on in thedevelopment of. Glufosinate
ammonium and bringing thatproduct to the market, there
were, they found out prettyquickly that, you know, there
were two isomers involved forthe glufosinate ammonium
molecule, you know, the L isomerand the D isomer. And without
(05:19):
going too far down a rabbit holeof real intense chemistry. You
know, they found that, you know,the isomers were, were present,
and that there was a verydifficult, 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
(05:41):
what they're you know, what'sbecome Liberty 280 and other
products that are known as, youknow, racemic glufosinate
mixtures. And those racemicglufosinate mixtures, Liberty
280 included, contain L and Disomer so, you know, as far as
(06:02):
you know, as far as I'veunderstood it, that's, you know,
a little bit on the historythere. But as far as liberty,
Ultra and it, you know, it'sactive ingredient, you know, the
the yellow isomer isherbicidally active. And there's
always been, you know, like Isaid, this difficult, you know,
(06:24):
sort of obstacle in the way oftrying 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 theproduct registered, in my
opinion. So that's in thetechnical terms. You're looking
(06:46):
at the past of, you know,regular glufosinate as a racemic
mixture. And then sort of theway that, you know, BASF is
going, and, you know, soundslike UPL is going, you know,
pursuing a resolved isomer ofglufosinate with L glufosinate,
or glufosinate p being the namedactive ingredient there.
Lynn Justesen (07:07):
I'll probably go in the weeds a little bit more
maybe, if that's okay. I thinkthe basis of it is that, I think
the simplest terms for me, youknow, if you look at history
wise, we had a, you know, we'vehad several, several chemistries
that we've had these, theseracemic right? These, these
(07:27):
isomers that are just inactive.Probably the one, the bigger
one, is metallic core, right? Wehave this racemic it's inactive.
It carries a lot of weight. Andthen the, and then, and then
the, you know, one, if you ifyou look at the what a chemistry
company is going to try and doyou're going to try and bring
something out rapidly, right? Assoon as you discover it, you
need to figure out a way to getthat and one figure out if it
(07:49):
works. If it does, how fast do Ibring it to market? And
sometimes you give up somebaggage to get there, right? And
you give up some things to getthere. And I really, I really
think that's what it is. So ifyou compare what the L
glufosinate is compared toglufosinate, it's no different
than what we've done with thewe've done with metolachlor
right? We have a racemicversion, where we go out and
there's, there's multiple ways,and I think we between, between
(08:09):
BASF and UPL, we come at it alittle bit different, but the
end game is the same, right? Theend game is, is we want a pure
isomer, right? Or we're tryingto get to it pure is near
impossible, right? I mean, ifyou break into half lives and
parts per billion, we can neverget it pure. But if you can get
90, 95% in that range of purity,you know, the whole system kind
(08:31):
of wins on it, right? So, if welook at, if we look at things
like just purely from, from us,logistic wise, whether it's BASF
or or UPL, right? Either one ofus, we get to transport half as
much, right? But all of a suddenit becomes more efficient. So
instead of a tank holding, youknow, 4000 4000 let's say a tank
(08:52):
originally holds 12,000 acres,roughly a standard bulk tank
that holds 12,000 acres, it nowholds 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 theEPA driven things and
environmental, you know, theEndangered Species Act, and some
(09:14):
of the fun, let's call it thatis associated with those, if you
think about those as well, andyou put that with that, all of a
sudden, now we're also puttinghalf as much out, right? We're
making half the application, andwe've lost no efficacy in theory
with with what we're doing. Ithink the other nice benefit
that I can roughly touch on andwhy it's different, and what,
(09:37):
what we've seen with some of ourdata, is that by cleaning that
up, we have less noise, right?You know, there are times where
we we may have a little bit ofcrop response, right? Or there
may be some places where we seesome funky things happen with
weeds, where we should havekilled them, like we just
didn't, right? And it just, youjust kind of scratch your head,
and then, then, I mean, we goback to, well, all right, we
(09:59):
did, did we have the right?Adjuvants. And then, okay, well,
you have to be careful withadjuvants. And then, then, well,
did we get the right amount ofcoverage? And was it wet long
enough? And did it, did itpenetrate the wheat long enough,
you know? And, you know, did werun, if we ran 15 gallons an
acre, would we have been couldwe have killed the wheat if we
got 20 and and you get throughthat, and then I think this to
me, and again, this was thesimplest term. Is that if you're
(10:20):
reducing an isomer. And that'swhat the isomer is, right? If
that's the leaf surface, youknow, at that point when we had
the isomer of that, this is aterrible impromptu half of that,
if you know, if you can seethat, maybe you can't, bam,
alright. So half of that, halfof this, half, half of half of
(10:40):
this white surface when you madethat application, when you had a
racemic version, half of that ishit with product that's
inactive. It has to be. It'ssimply math, right? It's simply
math. When you pull that racemicout and you take we're going to
remove that. And now let's saywe're at 90% and I know we'll
play healthy in this. But whatthe heck? So there's a little
(11:01):
bit of a doubt that 90% in thecorner, right? That 90% is the
difference, to me, just sheermath, and just if you look at
scatter charts and everythingelse math alone, it will be
substantially better justbecause 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
(11:23):
spraying before was inactive. Imean, we and we don't talk about
it, right? We can talk about itnow, and we can talk about all
the other people have theinactive stuff, and we'll make
sure we talk loud and proudabout that, right? Ma'am, but
not. But up till then, we didn'ttalk about it because we didn't
have a choice. Now we have achoice. Let's get something that
has more on it for late that'sat least. That's my take on. And
(11:43):
if I'm all wet, then say, so I'mgood with that too.
Liam Vincent (11:45):
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, andcertainly, yeah, all of the
points that you made on easierhandling are are very valid, absolutely.
Sarah Lancaster (12:08):
So one curiosity question, and I don't
know it might be too technicalof a question to ask, and it
also might be too too legal of aquestion to ask, but can you
give, like, a synopsis or anoverview of how the chemistry
works to purify it. Are youjust, like, adding another
reactant somewhere? Is it somesort of filtration process,
(12:32):
like, help us, help us get anidea of what happens, like, kind
of in the black box behind thejug or the tote,
Lynn Justesen (12:41):
I'll go. I think we're okay saying this. I don't
know. We'll find out I have ajob next week not I'll be open
to you, Sarah, at least from mystandpoint, what, what we've
done with it those is afiltration right? It's a, it's
an ultra filtration system whereyou're just basically trying to
filter it and remove it. Andthat's tremendously simplistic,
(13:02):
but it's ours. Is really afiltration system, and it's
trying to get it filtered outto, we talk about 95% pure, and
that's where we number out at itsimple as that, simply
filtration, very consistent,very easy to do and replicate
from our standpoint. And nowthat I won't, I won't speak for
anybody else's product on thatfor sure. So,
Liam Vincent (13:23):
yeah, I mean, I think Lynn, you mentioned it at
the top. You know, there's acouple different ways of getting
there, but we ultimately get tothis, you know, relatively the
same end product, right? And Ithink that that's, you know, is
an important thing to to pointout. But, yeah, I mean, as far
(13:44):
as you know, how does, how do weget there with Liberty Ultra? So
we've made it pretty clear inour labeling and our marketing
on easier handling that likewithout a process of getting
here, there is no, you know,there is no liberty Ultra,
right? And that process for usis glufosinate technology, which
(14:05):
is our main in our manufacturingprocess, we essentially
transform those D isomers andmake them l isomer So again,
there's, there's a lot ofchemistry behind that that we'll
get into. But ultimately, yes,you know, you're taking the D
isomer that's present in the AIand just making it l isomer.
Sarah Lancaster (14:27):
So, so it sounds like yours Liam is more
of a chemical reaction, wetchemistry, and then yours is
more of a physical separation ona very micro scale.
Lynn Justesen (14:38):
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 50mesh screen.
Sarah Lancaster (14:52):
Okay, okay, so next things, I guess, to think
about a little bit. Are we readyto. 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.
Lynn Justesen (15:09):
No fire away. I'm I'm good with it. Dig into the
weeds and and, yeah, get in themas fun as you want. Yeah.
Sarah Lancaster (15:20):
So this has been the first product that has
been kind of fully approved withwhat we anticipate to be the
template for the new labelrequirements and restrictions
going forward. So how doesespecially, okay, so we've got
one product that's in themarketplace. We've got Lynn, you
(15:40):
guys have got yours coming rightbehind.
Lynn Justesen (15:42):
behind it, yeah, yeah. We should probably mention
that, though the Liberty Ultrais labeled inner line mega is
not we're pending. We'resubstantially close. And I think
we will find that much of thenext topic, you know, if we're
going to talk about the ESAEndangered Species Act, things,
you find that this is, this willbe the second product that will
(16:03):
have those, those tagged to thembecause of the new registration
on it, and be considered a new anew new chemistry, technically,
right? Yep. So that's a trickything. So just a little side
note on this. This, yes, theydeal is wild, right? So the this
L-glufosinate thing falls underthat, right? And as you know,
(16:24):
Sarah, we just got anotherchemistry, which I already
mentioned it and shamelesslyplugged it prior. I won't
shamelessly plug it again, butwe brought it. But both of those
chemistries already in themarket. Technically, just one
has never been introduced intothe corn market. We didn't have
to fall into that because theywere already registered, right?
Whereas this one is that thecrazy part is what we just
(16:45):
talked about, in the in the inthe reduction of the isomer in
it, it's the same isomer doingthe same things, yet it's
different, right? They considerit 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 theL isomer was doing all the work
before, right? We just made itmore we reduced the rate. We
(17:07):
made it more intense in a lot ofways. I think both molecules,
both, both the ways we gotthere, both UPL and BSF, we've
made it better, right? But, Imean, so sorry, I got that all
the way. I don't again. It'sagain, not my goat, not my
county fair, but I just don't, Idon't understand how they decide
(17:30):
what is and what isn'tdifferent, right?
Sarah Lancaster (17:35):
Well, I mean, Alyssa, have you been talking
about this in the extensioncircuit, this one or two, right?
What is the, what is the in yourcounty fair? What are your Yeah,
just about with regard to Yeah,yeah, the new labeling, the new
record keeping, what's, what'sbeen the conversation in the
(17:55):
countryside?
Alyssa Essman (17:56):
Lot of blank stares, a lot of like how. You
know, I think a lot of it goesjust back to record keeping, and
it's just another layer of stuffyou have to do ahead of the
growing season, and websites tocheck. And some of the things we
talk about are, you know, howeasy is the website to use? If
you have internet access, wheredo you go to check these things?
(18:16):
You know, it's a, it's a it's aprocess. It's not just look at
the label for an update. It'sthe label says you also have to
check this website within sixmonths, and and on and on. The
other question we get, andwe've, I know we've talked about
this on those ESA episodes, butis what is, in terms of actual
follow through, in terms offolks coming out and like,
(18:39):
what's the compliance look like,and in terms of, like, the ODA
inspections, those sort ofthings, what does that
enforcement? That's the word Iwas looking for enforcement.
What's that gonna look like? Sothat's kind of where the
questions have been on our end.What about you? Sarah, yeah,
Sarah Lancaster (18:55):
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 tokind of, I mean, the reason I
asked this question then isbecause I was even through the
the technology, I was gettingthe frustration vibes there.
And, I mean, I think there's alot of just frustration vibes
(19:17):
about it, even though, you know,we can say these labels are
going to be easy to meet therequirements. It's just more
things that they've got tofigure out how to keep track of
and take the time to to naildown. How does that align with
y'all messaging? As you moveforward with marketing,
Liam Vincent (19:35):
everything about the herbicide strategy seems to
be a way that the EPA has cometo an agreement with some folks
that tend to sue them afterevery registration that they
made prior to this, and thiswas, this was a way to satisfy
the Endangered Species Act goingback many decades, and then just
(19:56):
the standard that they werebeing held to by these
Organizations. And, you know, Ithink 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'reconsidering l-glufosinate or
glufosinate P ammonium, to bethat that new, a new active
(20:18):
ingredient, classifying it assuch. 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 intentis to show them that it is
somewhat simple to comply with,it is change. Nobody likes
change. I mean, I didn't want tohave to go through this and
train our sales team or our techservice team, believe me, I
(20:39):
didn't want to do that as partof it, right? It's just part of
where we're at and part of howthe EPA is going to push push
products forward. And I mean,for better or for worse, this is
a template that's working forthem. I think that they're able
to follow this path to get otherproducts registered. Because I
(21:01):
think, you know, Lynn, you couldprobably share this frustration.
You know, we were waiting a longtime. We're waiting a long time
for these products to makeprogress within their system and
then to get registration. Imean, holy cow, it just takes a
long time. So hopefully this,this process figured out, speeds
(21:22):
it along.
Lynn Justesen (21:24):
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 thingsup. I mean that because they
have all the power in it. Andyou're x down the race, and X
ways down the road, and you'relike, if we miss another season,
it's the multiplier. Is this,right? We move we lose this much
(21:47):
more. Plus, the clock is stillticking on the patents, right,
and you still can't sell it, andthey're still accumulating. I
mean, there's cost of money,there's cost of continued moving
forward, and continued testingand all those things. So that's
a problem to me, number one withthat that you give things up,
and I don't know what BASF did.I know kind of what we've had to
(22:09):
do to get to where we can get itregistered. And then you go back
and ask for other things back,right? You go back, and then you
go right back to a reregistration project. So go back
and get what they made you takeaway anyway, which is, again,
more mind blowing things. Andthey come really quickly once
you have a registration again,things that, things that make
you scratch your head, I thinkso. I've had a bit of both. I'm
(22:30):
glad to hear both. Listen andSarah, hear yours out there. And
what, what I have heard is, is anow, what right? What's this
now? What more of a and thatgoes from the shrug of the
shoulders like to, why are wehave another one of these? Well,
okay, so I work, I work a lotwith, with the National aerial
the interplay the NationalAgricultural Applicators
(22:53):
Association, right? And they'vehad to do a fair amount of this
because aerial applications havebeen in these esas, and that's
called their past program,right? So they've had to deal
with this before. So that wasactually I went with Scott, kind
of their head, their head, theirhead, regulatory guy on. He
goes, Oh, it's not that big. Andhe walked me through some of it.
And it's honestly the, thebiggest turn this whole thing is
(23:18):
how complex they make it sound,right? They have over, I mean,
and that's, I guess that's justmaybe, that's just maybe, that's
their way. They make it soundreally complex. And then you get
to the very end, and Liam, I'msure you've given these, I've
given lots of thesepresentations. You get all the
way, and you get 45 minutes ofpeople just going, what is going
(23:39):
on? Or 30 minutes, why are wedoing this is ridiculous. You
get to them and you go, here'sthe things you do. And they go,
I'm already doing those. Youpass. Okay. What about the
runoff? That one's probablyeasier. Here's the thing you're
doing. You passed. What do Ineed to do with that? Write it
down when, right now, right goin, right now, open up the map
(24:01):
and find out if you are in azone that has additional has
additional restrictions, whichwe have almost none here, right?
There's a few spots like, Ithink I looked up the other day,
around the pedal Creek, aroundthat there's some bug that
there's in Nebraska too, thatyou have to be careful this bug,
right? Which, okay, that'sgreat. We'll be careful the bug,
(24:23):
but we're not spraying that, sowe're probably okay. But anyway,
you have to be mindful of that.But you get beyond that, and
you're like, we're kind ofalready doing this, right? We're
kind of already doing this. Atyour point, what are we going to
do? What's the enforcement looklike, from what I've talked to
and I would be, I'd be curiousto hear Liam's in you all
comments on this too? What weunderstand unless there's
(24:43):
trouble, or there's somethingthat's turned in, or there's a
complaint, you probably writethese down, you track records,
and it probably never matters,but you still have to do it that
I at least that's what I'mhearing anyway.
Sarah Lancaster (24:59):
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 guessthey'll, they'll tell me if I'm
wrong. But my messaging hasbasically been that, yeah, and I
want you to have your rear endcovered by proving that you have
X number of points. In thiscase, it's three. So that's
(25:22):
pretty easy for most of ourgrowers, and we can kind of get
into the details a little bitmore, maybe. But if you've got
your points, just document.Print that spreadsheet out that
the EPA provides. Just printthat, put it in your records,
save it on your files. Howeveryou're doing that, make sure you
printed that. You checked theuse limitation area website.
Print that, and you probablynever have to look at it again,
(25:43):
you know, for the rest, at leastfor the rest of the season,
unless something goes sidewayssomewhere else, and now they've
got an excuse to or a reason tomake an investigation. And
that's another thing that youcould 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 aticket if they see you not
(26:05):
wearing your seat belt. But pullyou over for speeding. You'll
have a seat belt violate,violation. So
Lynn Justesen (26:12):
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, youknow? I mean, I think that neat.
The great part is, is thatwhether it's inner line mega or
or Liberty Ultra, I mean, youget what is a point credit just
because of the reduced use rateof the product, right? Because
(26:35):
how we label it, and we, we'resmart 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 forthat, 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 getto it. It's, I think it's just a
matter of making it simple. I'mhopeful at some point somebody
(26:58):
has a website that a grower cango in and upload his stuff and
just track it and log it. Or aretailer, I assume there's
probably some places out theredoing it, but, you know, little
things like you just theerosion, runoff things. What is,
I mean, it's easy to figure out.It tells you exactly what you
have to have, right? It tellsyou the exact points. There's
(27:19):
not any guesswork in it. You candrop 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'regoing to use the use the use the
product, I think the first yearbuilding all this is the
hardest. But once you have itbuilt, it's a matter of going in
and backing up and validate,make sure it's nothing's
changed. Make sure there's notbeen, what are they called, with
(27:44):
the Pumas? Yeah, there'snothing. Nothing has showed up
on that. If nothing showed up,it's the same. I did it. I
checked the box. You did itagain. Here's my points.
Everything's the same. It's now26 not 25 I mean, I think it
becomes, I think, I think it'send of the year, you know, it's
end of the year planningpaperwork. You know, maybe when
you sit down with youragronomist, or your or you have
(28:04):
a crop, a crop Scout, or orwhoever you sit down, you just
make this. This is part of ourplanning, and it takes you, once
you have everything in it'sstuff.
Liam Vincent (28:15):
I was in a meeting last week with some consultants
from Texas, and one of the, youknow, we're talking about this,
as you know, to to a consultantaudience of saying, this is,
this is added value for you. Youcan help your folks work through
(28:37):
any confusion or questions thatthey have on this product,
product, and it's relativelysimple. Guys, you know, it's,
it's easy to get your pointsreally, just said, you know,
guys, this is, this is a way foryou to to walk somebody through,
get them comfortable with this,because this is the way of the
future. It's, it's coming forother herbicides. It's coming
(28:59):
for insecticides. Coming forfungicides. So, you know, being
able to get this right on thefirst one, I think, for, you
know, for l-glufosinate is agood thing. And on the
documenting piece of it, youknow, Dr Stanley Culpepper has
been a huge advocate. And thereason a huge reason, not the
(29:20):
reason, but a huge reason thatthis strategy and the way that
we have to work with the toolsthat we do have, it's workable
because of all the work thathe's done, and during a webinar,
he discussed with some of ourcustomers, Just that you can
(29:40):
batch fields together. So if agrower is operating on 3000
acres, 4000 acres, whatever, butthey're all sort of managed the
same, you know, they, theyconventional, till everything,
everything is in a is surroundedby, you know, wooden, you know,
by a strip of woodland orsomething, you know, that it's a
(30:03):
non irrigated field, all ofthese different things that
contribute to the practices thatthey do to raise a cotton or,
you know, or corn crop, orsomething that you can batch all
that together for, you know,whatever county you're in and
say, Okay, well, for so and soCounty in Georgia, I've got
(30:24):
these 2000 acres I'm managing acertain way, and you just, you
keep that paperwork, you changeit when you need to, to make
sure that there's that you'veincorporated any possible
changes. But, you know, yeah, asfar as the documenting thing, I
understand that's a step thatpeople there's like, okay, it's
one more thing. But again, thisis coming for other products
(30:46):
too.
Alyssa Essman (30:48):
No, I just agree with what you both kind of
mentioned here, and that's onething I've been talking about,
is, I think part of the concernleading up to this sort of
rollout was so much uncertaintyaround how intense it was going
to be and and it's a lot morestraightforward than I think
maybe we were anticipating. Itis, it seems more of a record
keeping situation. And so ifthere's any positive I think, I
(31:10):
think that's it,
Liam Vincent (31:12):
yeah. And I'd also add too, it's one of those
things you start looking intowhat's required now, versus with
this new product that you knowthat for us, we're launching in
2025 with Liberty Ultra, asopposed to some of the measures
that had to be practiced in thepast, like when you think about
sprint, you think about drift,that has to be managed within
(31:34):
enlist one today, they've got a30 foot buffer, and some things
they got to do and points theygot 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 yourdrift, obviously. So these are
not new things. It's justpotentially it's a new thing to
(31:57):
a tool that didn't have theseparameters on it beforehand.
Lynn Justesen (32:01):
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, inrelationship to that we would
have any kind of a a deal. Andyou've got to get to Michigan
and Minnesota, and there's someother kind of hot spots where
people got crazy, right? Andthose things. But again, some of
those buffers already in there.But simple things like run your
(32:22):
booms at the height they'resupposed to run, it's and you
use a coarse droplet, right? Oryou use a medium droplet. You
can reduce your your 50 foot nowbecomes 25 right? And then you
put a, you put a, you put theright drift additive, right, the
the drift reduction agent inthere. And you take another 15%
(32:45):
off, and now you, it's not, not15 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 ofyour 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'sreally it. It's just making us
(33:06):
more aware of it. And, like,like, you know, Liam said on
that, many of these things arealready in place. We just
didn't, kind of, maybe weweren't paying enough attention,
right? But I, again, I don'twant, I don't want to poo, poo
it, but I don't want you to blowyour head up or blow, you know,
it's going to be the end of theworld either. I don't, I just, I
don't see it in either one ofthose two. I think if you do
(33:27):
your work and it's pre work, andyou get all your things done, I
mean, and to your point, if youhave the data, and there's
something that comes up and yousay, No, I have my three points.
I actually have six points formy, for my for my runoff, my
drift reduction was down to twofoot, right? I mean, it's no
it's five. It's either five orzero, because everything rounds
to the fifth to the five right,either five foot or zero. You
round out where you're at. Youhave the applicator on your on
(33:48):
your you know, if you have anykind 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 evenhave to ever write anything
down, just enter thing in, logit, run it into a cloud, and
you're set.
Sarah Lancaster (34:04):
Yeah. I mean, I know my anxiety level about this
decreased from '23 to '24 and itwent down significantly from' 24
to '25.
Lynn Justesen (34:15):
it was pretty spooky. The things they were
talking about, if there was athey were, I mean, you they were
talking about that was in isthat Arkansas, there was a
bumblebee, a specific Bumblebeein Arkansas that had, that was
an endangered species, that it'shome range. They somebody had
established this five mileradius, right? So if you were
then five miles of that, you'relike, Okay, that's not that bad,
(34:38):
right? Well, and this is some ofthe aerial my aerial buddies
telling me this so and, but itwasn't that then it was, if
there was a tree that washollow, that possibly could be a
home, then that could be part ofits range. And all of a sudden
you have to go to that. And itjust kept getting bigger and
bigger and bigger and again,those that was the '23 stuff, I
(34:58):
think maybe you're talkingabout, you know. Era that it
that was spooky. And I thinkwe've got, I know how, but
somehow we got some common sensebuilt into it. So that's the
good news.
Sarah Lancaster (35:08):
So I was curious. I mean, we've kind of
tiptoed around it, but how didthis 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 thesebuffer requirements and some
extra, you know, point systemsand things like that that we
talked about with folks. Buthaving this be kind of the the
(35:33):
template for things goingforward, in terms of the
herbicide strategy proposal, youknow, how did that change the
registration process for youguys?
Liam Vincent (35:44):
You know, yeah, I mean, it was just slow, right? I
mean, it just, it slowedeverything down, you know, you
you thought that, you know, youmight be making some, some
progress, and just not hearinganything. And then you start to,
you know, you get further andfurther down the road, and you
realize, well, we really haven'tmade any progress. I think there
(36:09):
was some waiting that needed tohappen on the EPA side, because
I think that they are looking toground everything in defensible
work that they can document, if,if they're ever sued for
registration and findingsomething, finding a process
they can move through quicklyand defend, was their ultimate
(36:31):
goal, and I think it took a longtime, but at the same time,
they're working with asignificantly fewer number of
people than they've ever, youknow, really had to work with in
their history to, you know, kindof overcome this really large
obstacle that was in their wayof these really, really well
(36:52):
financed and capableorganizations are of litigating
against them for for anyregistration. And so while it,
while it definitely made my lifemore difficult and slowed down
the progress for a lot ofproducts, they had to do this in
(37:13):
my, in my view, to to goforward.
Sarah Lancaster (37:18):
Mean, it's not good for any of us when the
federal government gets sued ifyou're paying taxes.
Lynn Justesen (37:24):
Well, I think, I think maybe the so this is the,
this would be more theagronomist or than the than the
employee, though, and then Iguess 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 weneed to take with a grain of
(37:47):
salt here, right? Is that Ithink part of the reason this is
this got more pointed, wasbecause 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 atthe 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 myhumble opinion, this is not
(38:10):
upls. In my humble opinion, wekilled oak trees and trees that
we shouldn't have. We had offtarget movement that we probably
shouldn't right, because wedidn't eat and we didn't do some
of the things we should have. Wethought it would be okay. It
wasn't right. And there's,again, to Liam's point, there
are people that are well fundedand have the spare time, it
turns out, to go chase every oneof these rabbits down, right? So
(38:35):
I look at this as, yeah, I thisis a bit of penance for our sins
of the past, and those sins ofthe past, we need to be a bit
more judicious. And if you do afew things right, it not only
covers the EPA, but which, asmuch 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 theyand we can help them cover their
(38:55):
ass a little bit. We'd like ourscovered, and we'd like to cover
our growers and our customerstoo. And I think this is a way
for all of us to do that, with alittle bit of language, right?
It will, if you ever get in anincident to what you were
talking about, if we ever getinto a space where somebody it
will happen, somebody's going tothere's going to be a complaint,
(39:17):
it will go to the state, and thestate will go to the Fed, and it
will roll up to this, andthey'll say, Well, yeah, this
was l-glufosinate. Okay, thenthey just go, Yeah, I have my
paperwork here. Here's when Iapplied it, here's where I
checked it last February. Andthis was late on last March, 10.
I went and I did this. And Ihad, not only three, I had six
of my drift mitigations. Mydrift mitigation, my buffer, was
(39:37):
five foot, as you can see by mysprayed records, by my swapping
I was five foot off the edge ofthe field. I think I'm covered,
then they will go, Okay, thankyou and move on, right? I mean,
I think that's what it is. Imean it I think this is that
ounce of prevention, right? I
Sarah Lancaster (39:55):
mean, that's what we're looking for, right?
That scenario that you describedis kind of the goal. Yeah.
Lynn Justesen (40:00):
Yeah, it's just, it's still right thing to do.
It's a pain. The right thing todo usually isn't easy. So let's
just, let's do the right thing.Because again, just, we've,
we've all discussed to thispoint, this isn't the last one.
There's more coming. I mean,there, I don't think there'll be
less regulation, so
Sarah Lancaster (40:19):
it'll be okay. I've been telling my folks this
is a good one to get your, youknow, practice like you've got
the training wheels, becausethis is pretty low bar to hit.
Lynn Justesen (40:28):
Yeah, you're doing it on one product right
now, right? Yep, yeah, yeah, oneproduct that's got a pretty low,
low requirement. So, yeah.
Sarah Lancaster (40:38):
um, Alyssa, what other questions did you
have anything that you think wewe didn't hit like we should
have.
Alyssa Essman (40:43):
I guess I'm just thinking of a couple questions
here that I think growers mightask when it comes to these
products. Specifically. Onewould be, is this supposed to be
a replacement? Are all Libertyproducts? They're going to be an
option going forward. And thenother things, they'll probably,
you know, we'll probably getquestions about our price and
efficacy in relation to thoseother products.
Liam Vincent (41:07):
Hmm, wow.
Sarah Lancaster (41:10):
they're not one to jump on Those.
Liam Vincent (41:14):
you want to ask in terms about price, it's, it's
something I keep my head out ofon purpose.
Lynn Justesen (41:19):
I don't, I hide behind the shield of agronomy.
I'll be very honest, that's myline. Shield of agronomy is
right here, and not I would, Iwould say this. I would be it's,
it's a premium product at a lessprice that's shown some
advantages on some of ourtoughest to control weed
species. There will probably bea little bit of a premium ask
(41:41):
for that. It would only be fairto because it is new technology
that it honestly it's mucheasier to make your Endangered
Species Act with this right orother things that may be in the
wings. This one will help youmake those make it a bit easier.
Our focus at UPL will be totransition to this for the
reasons we talked about beforeefficiency, not only in the
(42:05):
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 upto 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, ifyou're, if you're a 55% use
rate, that means I've extendedhow big my you know, I'm
(42:27):
carrying around a 250 or I carryaround two, 250 I carry 500 with
me. I can now spread 1000 acresin a day and not have to go get
product. That's huge. And I'mlike, they're like, Oh, that's a
big deal. I was like, well, wemight 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 thingslike that make sense. I think in
(42:49):
some of the efficiencies and theother things we get, we're
getting with these products. Imean, why wouldn't we? Will they
be available? Yeah, there'll belots of people that have that
stuff available. But I think I'dtake the good stuff that showed
the advanced improvements andadvanced efficiency. To me, I
still like dead weedsAbsolutely.
Sarah Lancaster (43:13):
You're all strategy the same. Liam, I mean,
because my my understanding isthat Liberty 280 is going to go
away.
Liam Vincent (43:19):
So we'll, in this year, stop producing liberty 280
and and make a full full swingto transitioning into and
producing L-glufosinate orLiberty Ultra. You know, of
course, stuff lingers in thechannel i I'm surprised every
year by the totes that getpulled out of the back corners
(43:42):
of a warehouse. And people ask,Can I spray this? And so that'll
happen for for us, formanufacturing, yeah, we'll make
a full transition here intoLiberty Ultra
Sarah Lancaster (43:56):
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, Iguess, generic labels will be
able to have access to thistechnology, right? So, so the
the mixture will still be in themarketplace in that capacity for
a period of time, right?
Liam Vincent (44:15):
Yeah, I think there's a good, good, long life
for these, course, you know likethat, that that clock ticks
begins to tick when you submit.You know your registration
right?
Lynn Justesen (44:30):
Yeah, it's already ticked for a few years.
So it's a nice, long one, but wewaited another two years, by
most all standards, another 24months to get to where hope to
be.
Liam Vincent (44:40):
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 cansteward this technology to
continue to work for severalyears, right? You know. The the
(45:00):
advent of new, new activeingredients. Yeah, that's a
tough one. And there it's not,it's not getting any easier. You
know, there's been a longdrought, right, in new modes of
action and such. And with theDicamba vacature, we're looking
at two main knock down herbsides, right and, and so I hope
(45:24):
that in the you know, we've weknow that there's a lot of, you
know, generic glufosinate outthere, you know, Lynn, that's
probably something you, you're,you're very aware of, is just,
you know what, what products aregoing for. And just, you know,
registrations come in all thetime of a new company that wants
to sell some glufosinate andit's, it's every month, it seems
(45:45):
like, Yeah, everybody can put aformulation together. So yeah, I
think stewarding It is superimportant. Yeah,
Lynn Justesen (45:52):
yeah. I Yeah. I think, I think the stewarding is
going to be as big. I thinkthat's it, as much as anything
with this is that there's not alot of new things coming, right?
And and this one incrementallygets us better, but it's back to
what am I doing to manage itbefore and after I spray this?
This isn't the end all be, allright? This isn't the magic
(46:13):
bullet. This isn't somethingthat does everything. A really
robust, in my opinion, a robusttree that could start to fall
before. Quite honestly, if youreally want to maximize what
you're up to, I think you gothrough, you make your Spring
application, you come throughwith a with an aggressive,
timely, aggressive, driven ondays not leave height or stages,
(46:34):
with a with an L glufosinate aproduct with an extended with
some sort of an extension ofyour residual control added to
that, and try and get canopyclosure as fast as you can,
right? And if you have somethingcome back out, I mean, I've, I
know we've heard this a lot, andagain, it's easy to do when you
don't, you're not at the turnrow with the checkbook. The Zero
(46:56):
Tolerance is part of what wehave to really start looking for
and aiming for, and I thinkthat's possible, or to get very
close to it, but you have to bejudicious. And I don't think you
can lay in enough that, again,the easiest way to kill is one
we never speak, right? And thenI think this is part of that,
and and any of the and eitherone of these two in use
(47:17):
patterns, if I can, from ourstandpoint, it's 28 days. You
come out of this 28 days, it'snot it's not three inch weeds.
It's 28 days. I don't care whatyour 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 hellout of them, and I can get them
all the way to the ground,right? There's not enough leaves
(47:38):
for me that I can't get them.Even if you do some other things
not quite right? We can stillwork through them again. It buys
this window, buys this time. Ithink those sort of, I know
that's a bit a bit differentthan IPM says, see them, find
them, identify them, get them atthe right height and kill them.
We're not that fast, right? Ifthis thing, we can't miss,
(48:00):
right? I mean, that's the robustpre, you should target 20 in my
again, these are all just lineopinion. And from what I've seen
it if, if you want to, if ourtarget is always 28 days. Post,
and Sarah has seen our, seen ourwhen our, when our protocols
come, it's 28 days. I don'tcare. It's 28 days. Don't care
how big it is. Don't I want 28days. But when you spray it at
(48:21):
28 days, it's even if, even ifit's there. And she goes out,
and at 28 days, it rains forthree days. We're now at 31
days. Wow, that's too windy, andshe can't spray it right. Well,
now we're at 35 days. And that'swhy we mentioned that before,
and I saw Liam nod his head, arobust pre. Is why we do that. I
don't want my pre to diet 28days. I want my pre to diet 50
(48:43):
days, and I'm still going tospray at 28 days. Because I
don't ever want a gap. I don'tever want something to I don't
ever want to look at a weed andgo, boy, I don't know if I can
kill that one. I want to look ateveryone and go, this is a this
is done right? Or to have agrower. Best Day of My Life is
when a grower or a cooperatorcomes in, he says, I don't know.
(49:04):
I'm not sure why I'm sprayingthis. That's the perfect day to
spray it, right?
Sarah Lancaster (49:09):
We're retraining a lot of old habits.
Lynn Justesen (49:13):
Well, it? It? I I've lived all the way through
this cycle, Sarah, and I don'tthink there's probably anybody
else here that will match that Ilived through when we didn't
have any of these, right? Thethe biggest armor, and the
biggest one in my armor was whenI first started. I was there
when pursuit started. Right?Classic pinnacle, you know,
(49:37):
ultra Blazer was a pretty hotdeal at that point, then this,
this, this new pentamethyl andthis prowl deal showed up, and
that was, What do you mean? Idon't have to work it in. Well,
it's like trapline, but youdon't work it in and, and I've
seen lots of those where we didlots of robust things, did very
timely posts, and then, youknow, you followed up and did,
there's a fair amount of roguingthat still went on at that point
(49:58):
to clean Fields up. So we gotcompletely away from all that.
We've lost our marbles for a fewyears. We're we've dug most of
our way back to that, and we'reusing most of the chemistries we
use them, which is wonderful,because I know how to use most
of those. So it's worked its wayaround so but yeah, it's just,
and I know that's a hard one,and I know that's not it again.
(50:20):
It's it's not easy to to makeall those because we want the
easy button where we just sprayit once or twice and we're all
done. But I don't think that'srealistic in phase. So plus, as
you know, as Liam said, if wewant to keep this technology
alive for 510, 1520, years, wecan't be silly like that. You
have to be very, very specificand very pointed, so we'll get
(50:44):
there.
Liam Vincent (50:45):
Yeah, one of the things I've been mentioning a
lot is, as far as stewardship ofglufosinate goes, is, how can we
change people's mindsets abouttheir post emergence
application? How can we set uppost emergence applications for
success by using a robust pre sothat we have fewer individuals
(51:06):
that we spray every year. Youknow, these pres are phenomenal,
right? That they control so manyindividuals that we never see
come up. And the fact is, somepeople never get to see the
impact of that, because they'venever, I mean, they've, they've
see their field, and they see,you know, if they don't use a
(51:28):
pre or, you know, something keptthem out of the field, and so
they go into a total postsituation. But, man, it's
incredible. The amount ofselection pressure we can, we
can relieve by using those presand reducing, I mean, on an acre
basis, millions of fewerindividual weeds being sprayed
(51:49):
every year. So, yeah,
Sarah Lancaster (51:51):
incredible. All right, gentlemen, any final
thoughts before I ask you topoint our listeners to
additional resources.
Lynn Justesen (52:05):
Thank you. Thank you for the time. Thanks for the
invite. I truly appreciate it.Thank you for the time.
Liam Vincent (52:10):
So yeah, thank you. We
Sarah Lancaster (52:12):
were excited to get you guys on so and talk
about some new technology. Leeand Lynn, do you guys have any
websites or social mediachannels that you want to point
our listeners to.
Lynn Justesen (52:24):
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 listedthere.
Liam Vincent (52:38):
Yeah. And for me, I'd say go to Liberty Ultra
herbicide.com to find out moreabout Liberty Ultra
Sarah Lancaster (52:46):
Very good. Well, thank you again, guys for
joining us today. And you knowwe're thankful for the listeners
and our funding source from thenorth central IPM center. And I
guess we will shut this down fortoday and see everyone again
next time. Thanks.
(53:09):
Thanks for listening to the waragainst weeds podcast. We
appreciate support from thenorth central Integrated Pest
Management Center and thecollaboration with the Crop
Protection Network. At cropprotection network.org, you can
find this podcast, otherpodcasts, and a variety of other
(53:30):
pest management resources.
Welcome back to the war against the weeds
podcast. This is SarahLancaster, extension weed
management specialist at KansasState University, and on this
fine afternoon recording time,I've got Dr Essman with me as a
co host, hey Alyssa.
Alyssa Essman (00:21):
Hey Sarah.
Sarah Lancaster (00:23):
And today we've got a couple of guests with us
to chat about l-glufosinate. Soour guests today are, I'm just
going from the top of my screento the bottom of my screen. Here
we've got Liam Vincent and LynnJustesen. So I think first up,
we'll give Liam a chance to kindof introduce yourself, tell us
(00:44):
about your position and kind ofhow you came to be in your
current role with BASF.
Liam Vincent (00:49):
Yeah, sure. So I'm Liam Vincent, serve as the
technical marketing manager forliberty and liberty Ultra
herbicide at BASF and been inthis role for about four years.
And the way I kind of describethe role is it's sort of the the
intermediary of our research anddevelopment arm and the
(01:10):
marketing or sales arm of theorganization. So I get to be the
the in between there and came toBASF after getting my master's
in Weed Science at NC State andworking a little bit in
extension. And then I had theopportunity to start at BASF.
And so, you know, seven or soyears later, here we are.
Sarah Lancaster (01:35):
excellent. And Lynn, your turn tell us about
what to do for UPL and kind ofhow you came to this spot in
Lynn Justesen (01:44):
How I came to the war on weeds?
your career.
Sarah Lancaster (01:46):
Yeah How did you get here? (laughs)
Lynn Justesen (01:49):
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 andOmaha. I've been with UPL about
10 years, 10, almost 11 yearsnow, been in ag and retail,
either from been everywhere,from retail, ag through
distribution, seed sales, nowmanufacturing, and spent a fair
(02:11):
amount of that time in the techservice part, been doing that. I
think this will be my 35thsummer of full time work on that
this summer. So got a couple ofyears, 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 forUPL is I'm a tech service
(02:31):
manager for them in the northernfield crops, 104, and also do
some special projects, and kindof help manage that, that team a
little bit. But with that, whattech services for UPL is, is
we're not quite development andwe're not marketing. We're kind
of that, that in between. So asthings like, like the L
(02:52):
glufosinate molecule, or, youknow, other molecules like, you
know, we just launched a new1am, a carbazon and intrava dx,
as those come to market. We workwith universities, we work with
cooperators, and we'redeveloping one, introducing it
to the Ag Society in our agenvironment. And then two, we
also help prepare and get, getmarketing and data assessment
(03:15):
for for those same areas inorder to be able to go out and
sell and market and positionproducts. So again, a bit of, a
bit of an in between deal, noteither one or the other, but we
get, we get to do a little bitof both. So kind of a fun,
exciting we don't have specific,just herbicides, fungicides or
(03:35):
anything like that. We're kindof asked to be a jack of all
trades. So I guess I I always goback to my stance on all the
stuff, or most of everything Ido, Sarah and I have had these
conversations before, is thatwe, I'm an agronomist first,
right? And I happen to work fora chemical company, so, so Yeah,
(03:56):
do that, and we give anopportunity to do we're looking
at an L glufosinate as well. SoI guess that's what brings me
here today.
Sarah Lancaster (04:05):
So yep, wanted to get kind of two angles on
this story. So all right, as weroll along through through our
questions here, I guess first upfor the listeners is we need to
talk about what is Lglufosinate, and how is it
different than the regular orthe older formulations of
(04:27):
glufosinate? Liam? You want totake a first, first stab at that
one?
Liam Vincent (04:33):
Yeah, sure. I think, you know, with a lot of
your questions today, Lynn and Imay bounce, you know, bounce
things back and forth. As far asour experience, I think, you
know, especially the backgroundon of it, on this topic, a lot
of it's going to be the same, asfar as the history of
glufosinate. And it goes, youknow, goes way back, and I
(04:57):
think, pretty early on in thedevelopment of. Glufosinate
ammonium and bringing thatproduct to the market, there
were, they found out prettyquickly that, you know, there
were two isomers involved forthe glufosinate ammonium
molecule, you know, the L isomerand the D isomer. And without
(05:19):
going too far down a rabbit holeof real intense chemistry. You
know, they found that, you know,the isomers were, were present,
and that there was a verydifficult, 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
(05:41):
what they're you know, what'sbecome Liberty 280 and other
products that are known as, youknow, racemic glufosinate
mixtures. And those racemicglufosinate mixtures, Liberty
280 included, contain L and Disomer so, you know, as far as
(06:02):
you know, as far as I'veunderstood it, that's, you know,
a little bit on the historythere. But as far as liberty,
Ultra and it, you know, it'sactive ingredient, you know, the
the yellow isomer isherbicidally active. And there's
always been, you know, like Isaid, this difficult, you know,
(06:24):
sort of obstacle in the way oftrying 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 theproduct registered, in my
opinion. So that's in thetechnical terms. You're looking
(06:46):
at the past of, you know,regular glufosinate as a racemic
mixture. And then sort of theway that, you know, BASF is
going, and, you know, soundslike UPL is going, you know,
pursuing a resolved isomer ofglufosinate with L glufosinate,
or glufosinate p being the namedactive ingredient there.
Lynn Justesen (07:07):
I'll probably go in the weeds a little bit more
maybe, if that's okay. I thinkthe basis of it is that, I think
the simplest terms for me, youknow, if you look at history
wise, we had a, you know, we'vehad several, several chemistries
that we've had these, theseracemic right? These, these
(07:27):
isomers that are just inactive.Probably the one, the bigger
one, is metallic core, right? Wehave this racemic it's inactive.
It carries a lot of weight. Andthen the, and then, and then
the, you know, one, if you ifyou look at the what a chemistry
company is going to try and doyou're going to try and bring
something out rapidly, right? Assoon as you discover it, you
need to figure out a way to getthat and one figure out if it
(07:49):
works. If it does, how fast do Ibring it to market? And
sometimes you give up somebaggage to get there, right? And
you give up some things to getthere. And I really, I really
think that's what it is. So ifyou compare what the L
glufosinate is compared toglufosinate, it's no different
than what we've done with thewe've done with metolachlor
right? We have a racemicversion, where we go out and
there's, there's multiple ways,and I think we between, between
(08:09):
BASF and UPL, we come at it alittle bit different, but the
end game is the same, right? Theend game is, is we want a pure
isomer, right? Or we're tryingto get to it pure is near
impossible, right? I mean, ifyou break into half lives and
parts per billion, we can neverget it pure. But if you can get
90, 95% in that range of purity,you know, the whole system kind
(08:31):
of wins on it, right? So, if welook at, if we look at things
like just purely from, from us,logistic wise, whether it's BASF
or or UPL, right? Either one ofus, we get to transport half as
much, right? But all of a suddenit becomes more efficient. So
instead of a tank holding, youknow, 4000 4000 let's say a tank
(08:52):
originally holds 12,000 acres,roughly a standard bulk tank
that holds 12,000 acres, it nowholds 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 theEPA driven things and
environmental, you know, theEndangered Species Act, and some
(09:14):
of the fun, let's call it thatis associated with those, if you
think about those as well, andyou put that with that, all of a
sudden, now we're also puttinghalf as much out, right? We're
making half the application, andwe've lost no efficacy in theory
with with what we're doing. Ithink the other nice benefit
that I can roughly touch on andwhy it's different, and what,
(09:37):
what we've seen with some of ourdata, is that by cleaning that
up, we have less noise, right?You know, there are times where
we we may have a little bit ofcrop response, right? Or there
may be some places where we seesome funky things happen with
weeds, where we should havekilled them, like we just
didn't, right? And it just, youjust kind of scratch your head,
and then, then, I mean, we goback to, well, all right, we
(09:59):
did, did we have the right?Adjuvants. And then, okay, well,
you have to be careful withadjuvants. And then, then, well,
did we get the right amount ofcoverage? And was it wet long
enough? And did it, did itpenetrate the wheat long enough,
you know? And, you know, did werun, if we ran 15 gallons an
acre, would we have been couldwe have killed the wheat if we
got 20 and and you get throughthat, and then I think this to
me, and again, this was thesimplest term. Is that if you're
(10:20):
reducing an isomer. And that'swhat the isomer is, right? If
that's the leaf surface, youknow, at that point when we had
the isomer of that, this is aterrible impromptu half of that,
if you know, if you can seethat, maybe you can't, bam,
alright. So half of that, halfof this, half, half of half of
(10:40):
this white surface when you madethat application, when you had a
racemic version, half of that ishit with product that's
inactive. It has to be. It'ssimply math, right? It's simply
math. When you pull that racemicout and you take we're going to
remove that. And now let's saywe're at 90% and I know we'll
play healthy in this. But whatthe heck? So there's a little
(11:01):
bit of a doubt that 90% in thecorner, right? That 90% is the
difference, to me, just sheermath, and just if you look at
scatter charts and everythingelse math alone, it will be
substantially better justbecause 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
(11:23):
spraying before was inactive. Imean, we and we don't talk about
it, right? We can talk about itnow, and we can talk about all
the other people have theinactive stuff, and we'll make
sure we talk loud and proudabout that, right? Ma'am, but
not. But up till then, we didn'ttalk about it because we didn't
have a choice. Now we have achoice. Let's get something that
has more on it for late that'sat least. That's my take on. And
(11:43):
if I'm all wet, then say, so I'mgood with that too.
Liam Vincent (11:45):
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, andcertainly, yeah, all of the
points that you made on easierhandling are are very valid, absolutely.
Sarah Lancaster (12:08):
So one curiosity question, and I don't
know it might be too technicalof a question to ask, and it
also might be too too legal of aquestion to ask, but can you
give, like, a synopsis or anoverview of how the chemistry
works to purify it. Are youjust, like, adding another
reactant somewhere? Is it somesort of filtration process,
(12:32):
like, help us, help us get anidea of what happens, like, kind
of in the black box behind thejug or the tote,
Lynn Justesen (12:41):
I'll go. I think we're okay saying this. I don't
know. We'll find out I have ajob next week not I'll be open
to you, Sarah, at least from mystandpoint, what, what we've
done with it those is afiltration right? It's a, it's
an ultra filtration system whereyou're just basically trying to
filter it and remove it. Andthat's tremendously simplistic,
(13:02):
but it's ours. Is really afiltration system, and it's
trying to get it filtered outto, we talk about 95% pure, and
that's where we number out at itsimple as that, simply
filtration, very consistent,very easy to do and replicate
from our standpoint. And nowthat I won't, I won't speak for
anybody else's product on thatfor sure. So,
Liam Vincent (13:23):
yeah, I mean, I think Lynn, you mentioned it at
the top. You know, there's acouple different ways of getting
there, but we ultimately get tothis, you know, relatively the
same end product, right? And Ithink that that's, you know, is
an important thing to to pointout. But, yeah, I mean, as far
(13:44):
as you know, how does, how do weget there with Liberty Ultra? So
we've made it pretty clear inour labeling and our marketing
on easier handling that likewithout a process of getting
here, there is no, you know,there is no liberty Ultra,
right? And that process for usis glufosinate technology, which
(14:05):
is our main in our manufacturingprocess, we essentially
transform those D isomers andmake them l isomer So again,
there's, there's a lot ofchemistry behind that that we'll
get into. But ultimately, yes,you know, you're taking the D
isomer that's present in the AIand just making it l isomer.
Sarah Lancaster (14:27):
So, so it sounds like yours Liam is more
of a chemical reaction, wetchemistry, and then yours is
more of a physical separation ona very micro scale.
Lynn Justesen (14:38):
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 50mesh screen.
Sarah Lancaster (14:52):
Okay, okay, so next things, I guess, to think
about a little bit. Are we readyto. 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.
Lynn Justesen (15:09):
No fire away. I'm I'm good with it. Dig into the
weeds and and, yeah, get in themas fun as you want. Yeah.
Sarah Lancaster (15:20):
So this has been the first product that has
been kind of fully approved withwhat we anticipate to be the
template for the new labelrequirements and restrictions
going forward. So how doesespecially, okay, so we've got
one product that's in themarketplace. We've got Lynn, you
(15:40):
guys have got yours coming rightbehind.
Lynn Justesen (15:42):
behind it, yeah, yeah. We should probably mention
that, though the Liberty Ultrais labeled inner line mega is
not we're pending. We'resubstantially close. And I think
we will find that much of thenext topic, you know, if we're
going to talk about the ESAEndangered Species Act, things,
you find that this is, this willbe the second product that will
(16:03):
have those, those tagged to thembecause of the new registration
on it, and be considered a new anew new chemistry, technically,
right? Yep. So that's a trickything. So just a little side
note on this. This, yes, theydeal is wild, right? So the this
L-glufosinate thing falls underthat, right? And as you know,
(16:24):
Sarah, we just got anotherchemistry, which I already
mentioned it and shamelesslyplugged it prior. I won't
shamelessly plug it again, butwe brought it. But both of those
chemistries already in themarket. Technically, just one
has never been introduced intothe corn market. We didn't have
to fall into that because theywere already registered, right?
Whereas this one is that thecrazy part is what we just
(16:45):
talked about, in the in the inthe reduction of the isomer in
it, it's the same isomer doingthe same things, yet it's
different, right? They considerit 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 theL isomer was doing all the work
before, right? We just made itmore we reduced the rate. We
(17:07):
made it more intense in a lot ofways. I think both molecules,
both, both the ways we gotthere, both UPL and BSF, we've
made it better, right? But, Imean, so sorry, I got that all
the way. I don't again. It'sagain, not my goat, not my
county fair, but I just don't, Idon't understand how they decide
(17:30):
what is and what isn'tdifferent, right?
Sarah Lancaster (17:35):
Well, I mean, Alyssa, have you been talking
about this in the extensioncircuit, this one or two, right?
What is the, what is the in yourcounty fair? What are your Yeah,
just about with regard to Yeah,yeah, the new labeling, the new
record keeping, what's, what'sbeen the conversation in the
(17:55):
countryside?
Alyssa Essman (17:56):
Lot of blank stares, a lot of like how. You
know, I think a lot of it goesjust back to record keeping, and
it's just another layer of stuffyou have to do ahead of the
growing season, and websites tocheck. And some of the things we
talk about are, you know, howeasy is the website to use? If
you have internet access, wheredo you go to check these things?
(18:16):
You know, it's a, it's a it's aprocess. It's not just look at
the label for an update. It'sthe label says you also have to
check this website within sixmonths, and and on and on. The
other question we get, andwe've, I know we've talked about
this on those ESA episodes, butis what is, in terms of actual
follow through, in terms offolks coming out and like,
(18:39):
what's the compliance look like,and in terms of, like, the ODA
inspections, those sort ofthings, what does that
enforcement? That's the word Iwas looking for enforcement.
What's that gonna look like? Sothat's kind of where the
questions have been on our end.What about you? Sarah, yeah,
Sarah Lancaster (18:55):
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 tokind of, I mean, the reason I
asked this question then isbecause I was even through the
the technology, I was gettingthe frustration vibes there.
And, I mean, I think there's alot of just frustration vibes
(19:17):
about it, even though, you know,we can say these labels are
going to be easy to meet therequirements. It's just more
things that they've got tofigure out how to keep track of
and take the time to to naildown. How does that align with
y'all messaging? As you moveforward with marketing,
Liam Vincent (19:35):
everything about the herbicide strategy seems to
be a way that the EPA has cometo an agreement with some folks
that tend to sue them afterevery registration that they
made prior to this, and thiswas, this was a way to satisfy
the Endangered Species Act goingback many decades, and then just
(19:56):
the standard that they werebeing held to by these
Organizations. And, you know, Ithink 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'reconsidering l-glufosinate or
glufosinate P ammonium, to bethat that new, a new active
(20:18):
ingredient, classifying it assuch. 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 intentis to show them that it is
somewhat simple to comply with,it is change. Nobody likes
change. I mean, I didn't want tohave to go through this and
train our sales team or our techservice team, believe me, I
(20:39):
didn't want to do that as partof it, right? It's just part of
where we're at and part of howthe EPA is going to push push
products forward. And I mean,for better or for worse, this is
a template that's working forthem. I think that they're able
to follow this path to get otherproducts registered. Because I
(21:01):
think, you know, Lynn, you couldprobably share this frustration.
You know, we were waiting a longtime. We're waiting a long time
for these products to makeprogress within their system and
then to get registration. Imean, holy cow, it just takes a
long time. So hopefully this,this process figured out, speeds
(21:22):
it along.
Lynn Justesen (21:24):
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 thingsup. I mean that because they
have all the power in it. Andyou're x down the race, and X
ways down the road, and you'relike, if we miss another season,
it's the multiplier. Is this,right? We move we lose this much
(21:47):
more. Plus, the clock is stillticking on the patents, right,
and you still can't sell it, andthey're still accumulating. I
mean, there's cost of money,there's cost of continued moving
forward, and continued testingand all those things. So that's
a problem to me, number one withthat that you give things up,
and I don't know what BASF did.I know kind of what we've had to
(22:09):
do to get to where we can get itregistered. And then you go back
and ask for other things back,right? You go back, and then you
go right back to a reregistration project. So go back
and get what they made you takeaway anyway, which is, again,
more mind blowing things. Andthey come really quickly once
you have a registration again,things that, things that make
you scratch your head, I thinkso. I've had a bit of both. I'm
(22:30):
glad to hear both. Listen andSarah, hear yours out there. And
what, what I have heard is, is anow, what right? What's this
now? What more of a and thatgoes from the shrug of the
shoulders like to, why are wehave another one of these? Well,
okay, so I work, I work a lotwith, with the National aerial
the interplay the NationalAgricultural Applicators
(22:53):
Association, right? And they'vehad to do a fair amount of this
because aerial applications havebeen in these esas, and that's
called their past program,right? So they've had to deal
with this before. So that wasactually I went with Scott, kind
of their head, their head, theirhead, regulatory guy on. He
goes, Oh, it's not that big. Andhe walked me through some of it.
And it's honestly the, thebiggest turn this whole thing is
(23:18):
how complex they make it sound,right? They have over, I mean,
and that's, I guess that's justmaybe, that's just maybe, that's
their way. They make it soundreally complex. And then you get
to the very end, and Liam, I'msure you've given these, I've
given lots of thesepresentations. You get all the
way, and you get 45 minutes ofpeople just going, what is going
(23:39):
on? Or 30 minutes, why are wedoing this is ridiculous. You
get to them and you go, here'sthe things you do. And they go,
I'm already doing those. Youpass. Okay. What about the
runoff? That one's probablyeasier. Here's the thing you're
doing. You passed. What do Ineed to do with that? Write it
down when, right now, right goin, right now, open up the map
(24:01):
and find out if you are in azone that has additional has
additional restrictions, whichwe have almost none here, right?
There's a few spots like, Ithink I looked up the other day,
around the pedal Creek, aroundthat there's some bug that
there's in Nebraska too, thatyou have to be careful this bug,
right? Which, okay, that'sgreat. We'll be careful the bug,
(24:23):
but we're not spraying that, sowe're probably okay. But anyway,
you have to be mindful of that.But you get beyond that, and
you're like, we're kind ofalready doing this, right? We're
kind of already doing this. Atyour point, what are we going to
do? What's the enforcement looklike, from what I've talked to
and I would be, I'd be curiousto hear Liam's in you all
comments on this too? What weunderstand unless there's
(24:43):
trouble, or there's somethingthat's turned in, or there's a
complaint, you probably writethese down, you track records,
and it probably never matters,but you still have to do it that
I at least that's what I'mhearing anyway.
Sarah Lancaster (24:59):
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 guessthey'll, they'll tell me if I'm
wrong. But my messaging hasbasically been that, yeah, and I
want you to have your rear endcovered by proving that you have
X number of points. In thiscase, it's three. So that's
(25:22):
pretty easy for most of ourgrowers, and we can kind of get
into the details a little bitmore, maybe. But if you've got
your points, just document.Print that spreadsheet out that
the EPA provides. Just printthat, put it in your records,
save it on your files. Howeveryou're doing that, make sure you
printed that. You checked theuse limitation area website.
Print that, and you probablynever have to look at it again,
(25:43):
you know, for the rest, at leastfor the rest of the season,
unless something goes sidewayssomewhere else, and now they've
got an excuse to or a reason tomake an investigation. And
that's another thing that youcould 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 aticket if they see you not
(26:05):
wearing your seat belt. But pullyou over for speeding. You'll
have a seat belt violate,violation. So
Lynn Justesen (26:12):
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, youknow? I mean, I think that neat.
The great part is, is thatwhether it's inner line mega or
or Liberty Ultra, I mean, youget what is a point credit just
because of the reduced use rateof the product, right? Because
(26:35):
how we label it, and we, we'resmart 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 forthat, 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 getto it. It's, I think it's just a
matter of making it simple. I'mhopeful at some point somebody
(26:58):
has a website that a grower cango in and upload his stuff and
just track it and log it. Or aretailer, I assume there's
probably some places out theredoing it, but, you know, little
things like you just theerosion, runoff things. What is,
I mean, it's easy to figure out.It tells you exactly what you
have to have, right? It tellsyou the exact points. There's
(27:19):
not any guesswork in it. You candrop 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'regoing to use the use the use the
product, I think the first yearbuilding all this is the
hardest. But once you have itbuilt, it's a matter of going in
and backing up and validate,make sure it's nothing's
changed. Make sure there's notbeen, what are they called, with
(27:44):
the Pumas? Yeah, there'snothing. Nothing has showed up
on that. If nothing showed up,it's the same. I did it. I
checked the box. You did itagain. Here's my points.
Everything's the same. It's now26 not 25 I mean, I think it
becomes, I think, I think it'send of the year, you know, it's
end of the year planningpaperwork. You know, maybe when
you sit down with youragronomist, or your or you have
(28:04):
a crop, a crop Scout, or orwhoever you sit down, you just
make this. This is part of ourplanning, and it takes you, once
you have everything in it'sstuff.
Liam Vincent (28:15):
I was in a meeting last week with some consultants
from Texas, and one of the, youknow, we're talking about this,
as you know, to to a consultantaudience of saying, this is,
this is added value for you. Youcan help your folks work through
(28:37):
any confusion or questions thatthey have on this product,
product, and it's relativelysimple. Guys, you know, it's,
it's easy to get your pointsreally, just said, you know,
guys, this is, this is a way foryou to to walk somebody through,
get them comfortable with this,because this is the way of the
future. It's, it's coming forother herbicides. It's coming
(28:59):
for insecticides. Coming forfungicides. So, you know, being
able to get this right on thefirst one, I think, for, you
know, for l-glufosinate is agood thing. And on the
documenting piece of it, youknow, Dr Stanley Culpepper has
been a huge advocate. And thereason a huge reason, not the
(29:20):
reason, but a huge reason thatthis strategy and the way that
we have to work with the toolsthat we do have, it's workable
because of all the work thathe's done, and during a webinar,
he discussed with some of ourcustomers, Just that you can
(29:40):
batch fields together. So if agrower is operating on 3000
acres, 4000 acres, whatever, butthey're all sort of managed the
same, you know, they, theyconventional, till everything,
everything is in a is surroundedby, you know, wooden, you know,
by a strip of woodland orsomething, you know, that it's a
(30:03):
non irrigated field, all ofthese different things that
contribute to the practices thatthey do to raise a cotton or,
you know, or corn crop, orsomething that you can batch all
that together for, you know,whatever county you're in and
say, Okay, well, for so and soCounty in Georgia, I've got
(30:24):
these 2000 acres I'm managing acertain way, and you just, you
keep that paperwork, you changeit when you need to, to make
sure that there's that you'veincorporated any possible
changes. But, you know, yeah, asfar as the documenting thing, I
understand that's a step thatpeople there's like, okay, it's
one more thing. But again, thisis coming for other products
(30:46):
too.
Alyssa Essman (30:48):
No, I just agree with what you both kind of
mentioned here, and that's onething I've been talking about,
is, I think part of the concernleading up to this sort of
rollout was so much uncertaintyaround how intense it was going
to be and and it's a lot morestraightforward than I think
maybe we were anticipating. Itis, it seems more of a record
keeping situation. And so ifthere's any positive I think, I
(31:10):
think that's it,
Liam Vincent (31:12):
yeah. And I'd also add too, it's one of those
things you start looking intowhat's required now, versus with
this new product that you knowthat for us, we're launching in
2025 with Liberty Ultra, asopposed to some of the measures
that had to be practiced in thepast, like when you think about
sprint, you think about drift,that has to be managed within
(31:34):
enlist one today, they've got a30 foot buffer, and some things
they got to do and points theygot 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 yourdrift, obviously. So these are
not new things. It's justpotentially it's a new thing to
(31:57):
a tool that didn't have theseparameters on it beforehand.
Lynn Justesen (32:01):
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, inrelationship to that we would
have any kind of a a deal. Andyou've got to get to Michigan
and Minnesota, and there's someother kind of hot spots where
people got crazy, right? Andthose things. But again, some of
those buffers already in there.But simple things like run your
(32:22):
booms at the height they'resupposed to run, it's and you
use a coarse droplet, right? Oryou use a medium droplet. You
can reduce your your 50 foot nowbecomes 25 right? And then you
put a, you put a, you put theright drift additive, right, the
the drift reduction agent inthere. And you take another 15%
(32:45):
off, and now you, it's not, not15 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 ofyour 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'sreally it. It's just making us
(33:06):
more aware of it. And, like,like, you know, Liam said on
that, many of these things arealready in place. We just
didn't, kind of, maybe weweren't paying enough attention,
right? But I, again, I don'twant, I don't want to poo, poo
it, but I don't want you to blowyour head up or blow, you know,
it's going to be the end of theworld either. I don't, I just, I
don't see it in either one ofthose two. I think if you do
(33:27):
your work and it's pre work, andyou get all your things done, I
mean, and to your point, if youhave the data, and there's
something that comes up and yousay, No, I have my three points.
I actually have six points formy, for my for my runoff, my
drift reduction was down to twofoot, right? I mean, it's no
it's five. It's either five orzero, because everything rounds
to the fifth to the five right,either five foot or zero. You
round out where you're at. Youhave the applicator on your on
(33:48):
your you know, if you have anykind 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 evenhave to ever write anything
down, just enter thing in, logit, run it into a cloud, and
you're set.
Sarah Lancaster (34:04):
Yeah. I mean, I know my anxiety level about this
decreased from '23 to '24 and itwent down significantly from' 24
to '25.
Lynn Justesen (34:15):
it was pretty spooky. The things they were
talking about, if there was athey were, I mean, you they were
talking about that was in isthat Arkansas, there was a
bumblebee, a specific Bumblebeein Arkansas that had, that was
an endangered species, that it'shome range. They somebody had
established this five mileradius, right? So if you were
then five miles of that, you'relike, Okay, that's not that bad,
(34:38):
right? Well, and this is some ofthe aerial my aerial buddies
telling me this so and, but itwasn't that then it was, if
there was a tree that washollow, that possibly could be a
home, then that could be part ofits range. And all of a sudden
you have to go to that. And itjust kept getting bigger and
bigger and bigger and again,those that was the '23 stuff, I
(34:58):
think maybe you're talkingabout, you know. Era that it
that was spooky. And I thinkwe've got, I know how, but
somehow we got some common sensebuilt into it. So that's the
good news.
Sarah Lancaster (35:08):
So I was curious. I mean, we've kind of
tiptoed around it, but how didthis 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 thesebuffer requirements and some
extra, you know, point systemsand things like that that we
talked about with folks. Buthaving this be kind of the the
(35:33):
template for things goingforward, in terms of the
herbicide strategy proposal, youknow, how did that change the
registration process for youguys?
Liam Vincent (35:44):
You know, yeah, I mean, it was just slow, right? I
mean, it just, it slowedeverything down, you know, you
you thought that, you know, youmight be making some, some
progress, and just not hearinganything. And then you start to,
you know, you get further andfurther down the road, and you
realize, well, we really haven'tmade any progress. I think there
(36:09):
was some waiting that needed tohappen on the EPA side, because
I think that they are looking toground everything in defensible
work that they can document, if,if they're ever sued for
registration and findingsomething, finding a process
they can move through quicklyand defend, was their ultimate
(36:31):
goal, and I think it took a longtime, but at the same time,
they're working with asignificantly fewer number of
people than they've ever, youknow, really had to work with in
their history to, you know, kindof overcome this really large
obstacle that was in their wayof these really, really well
(36:52):
financed and capableorganizations are of litigating
against them for for anyregistration. And so while it,
while it definitely made my lifemore difficult and slowed down
the progress for a lot ofproducts, they had to do this in
(37:13):
my, in my view, to to goforward.
Sarah Lancaster (37:18):
Mean, it's not good for any of us when the
federal government gets sued ifyou're paying taxes.
Lynn Justesen (37:24):
Well, I think, I think maybe the so this is the,
this would be more theagronomist or than the than the
employee, though, and then Iguess 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 weneed to take with a grain of
(37:47):
salt here, right? Is that Ithink part of the reason this is
this got more pointed, wasbecause 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 atthe 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 myhumble opinion, this is not
(38:10):
upls. In my humble opinion, wekilled oak trees and trees that
we shouldn't have. We had offtarget movement that we probably
shouldn't right, because wedidn't eat and we didn't do some
of the things we should have. Wethought it would be okay. It
wasn't right. And there's,again, to Liam's point, there
are people that are well fundedand have the spare time, it
turns out, to go chase every oneof these rabbits down, right? So
(38:35):
I look at this as, yeah, I thisis a bit of penance for our sins
of the past, and those sins ofthe past, we need to be a bit
more judicious. And if you do afew things right, it not only
covers the EPA, but which, asmuch 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 theyand we can help them cover their
(38:55):
ass a little bit. We'd like ourscovered, and we'd like to cover
our growers and our customerstoo. And I think this is a way
for all of us to do that, with alittle bit of language, right?
It will, if you ever get in anincident to what you were
talking about, if we ever getinto a space where somebody it
will happen, somebody's going tothere's going to be a complaint,
(39:17):
it will go to the state, and thestate will go to the Fed, and it
will roll up to this, andthey'll say, Well, yeah, this
was l-glufosinate. Okay, thenthey just go, Yeah, I have my
paperwork here. Here's when Iapplied it, here's where I
checked it last February. Andthis was late on last March, 10.
I went and I did this. And Ihad, not only three, I had six
of my drift mitigations. Mydrift mitigation, my buffer, was
(39:37):
five foot, as you can see by mysprayed records, by my swapping
I was five foot off the edge ofthe field. I think I'm covered,
then they will go, Okay, thankyou and move on, right? I mean,
I think that's what it is. Imean it I think this is that
ounce of prevention, right? I
Sarah Lancaster (39:55):
mean, that's what we're looking for, right?
That scenario that you describedis kind of the goal. Yeah.
Lynn Justesen (40:00):
Yeah, it's just, it's still right thing to do.
It's a pain. The right thing todo usually isn't easy. So let's
just, let's do the right thing.Because again, just, we've,
we've all discussed to thispoint, this isn't the last one.
There's more coming. I mean,there, I don't think there'll be
less regulation, so
Sarah Lancaster (40:19):
it'll be okay. I've been telling my folks this
is a good one to get your, youknow, practice like you've got
the training wheels, becausethis is pretty low bar to hit.
Lynn Justesen (40:28):
Yeah, you're doing it on one product right
now, right? Yep, yeah, yeah, oneproduct that's got a pretty low,
low requirement. So, yeah.
Sarah Lancaster (40:38):
um, Alyssa, what other questions did you
have anything that you think wewe didn't hit like we should
have.
Alyssa Essman (40:43):
I guess I'm just thinking of a couple questions
here that I think growers mightask when it comes to these
products. Specifically. Onewould be, is this supposed to be
a replacement? Are all Libertyproducts? They're going to be an
option going forward. And thenother things, they'll probably,
you know, we'll probably getquestions about our price and
efficacy in relation to thoseother products.
Liam Vincent (41:07):
Hmm, wow.
Sarah Lancaster (41:10):
they're not one to jump on Those.
Liam Vincent (41:14):
you want to ask in terms about price, it's, it's
something I keep my head out ofon purpose.
Lynn Justesen (41:19):
I don't, I hide behind the shield of agronomy.
I'll be very honest, that's myline. Shield of agronomy is
right here, and not I would, Iwould say this. I would be it's,
it's a premium product at a lessprice that's shown some
advantages on some of ourtoughest to control weed
species. There will probably bea little bit of a premium ask
(41:41):
for that. It would only be fairto because it is new technology
that it honestly it's mucheasier to make your Endangered
Species Act with this right orother things that may be in the
wings. This one will help youmake those make it a bit easier.
Our focus at UPL will be totransition to this for the
reasons we talked about beforeefficiency, not only in the
(42:05):
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 upto 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, ifyou're, if you're a 55% use
rate, that means I've extendedhow big my you know, I'm
(42:27):
carrying around a 250 or I carryaround two, 250 I carry 500 with
me. I can now spread 1000 acresin a day and not have to go get
product. That's huge. And I'mlike, they're like, Oh, that's a
big deal. I was like, well, wemight 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 thingslike that make sense. I think in
(42:49):
some of the efficiencies and theother things we get, we're
getting with these products. Imean, why wouldn't we? Will they
be available? Yeah, there'll belots of people that have that
stuff available. But I think I'dtake the good stuff that showed
the advanced improvements andadvanced efficiency. To me, I
still like dead weedsAbsolutely.
Sarah Lancaster (43:13):
You're all strategy the same. Liam, I mean,
because my my understanding isthat Liberty 280 is going to go
away.
Liam Vincent (43:19):
So we'll, in this year, stop producing liberty 280
and and make a full full swingto transitioning into and
producing L-glufosinate orLiberty Ultra. You know, of
course, stuff lingers in thechannel i I'm surprised every
year by the totes that getpulled out of the back corners
(43:42):
of a warehouse. And people ask,Can I spray this? And so that'll
happen for for us, formanufacturing, yeah, we'll make
a full transition here intoLiberty Ultra
Sarah Lancaster (43:56):
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, Iguess, generic labels will be
able to have access to thistechnology, right? So, so the
the mixture will still be in themarketplace in that capacity for
a period of time, right?
Liam Vincent (44:15):
Yeah, I think there's a good, good, long life
for these, course, you know likethat, that that clock ticks
begins to tick when you submit.You know your registration
right?
Lynn Justesen (44:30):
Yeah, it's already ticked for a few years.
So it's a nice, long one, but wewaited another two years, by
most all standards, another 24months to get to where hope to
be.
Liam Vincent (44:40):
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 cansteward this technology to
continue to work for severalyears, right? You know. The the
(45:00):
advent of new, new activeingredients. Yeah, that's a
tough one. And there it's not,it's not getting any easier. You
know, there's been a longdrought, right, in new modes of
action and such. And with theDicamba vacature, we're looking
at two main knock down herbsides, right and, and so I hope
(45:24):
that in the you know, we've weknow that there's a lot of, you
know, generic glufosinate outthere, you know, Lynn, that's
probably something you, you're,you're very aware of, is just,
you know what, what products aregoing for. And just, you know,
registrations come in all thetime of a new company that wants
to sell some glufosinate andit's, it's every month, it seems
(45:45):
like, Yeah, everybody can put aformulation together. So yeah, I
think stewarding It is superimportant. Yeah,
Lynn Justesen (45:52):
yeah. I Yeah. I think, I think the stewarding is
going to be as big. I thinkthat's it, as much as anything
with this is that there's not alot of new things coming, right?
And and this one incrementallygets us better, but it's back to
what am I doing to manage itbefore and after I spray this?
This isn't the end all be, allright? This isn't the magic
(46:13):
bullet. This isn't somethingthat does everything. A really
robust, in my opinion, a robusttree that could start to fall
before. Quite honestly, if youreally want to maximize what
you're up to, I think you gothrough, you make your Spring
application, you come throughwith a with an aggressive,
timely, aggressive, driven ondays not leave height or stages,
(46:34):
with a with an L glufosinate aproduct with an extended with
some sort of an extension ofyour residual control added to
that, and try and get canopyclosure as fast as you can,
right? And if you have somethingcome back out, I mean, I've, I
know we've heard this a lot, andagain, it's easy to do when you
don't, you're not at the turnrow with the checkbook. The Zero
(46:56):
Tolerance is part of what wehave to really start looking for
and aiming for, and I thinkthat's possible, or to get very
close to it, but you have to bejudicious. And I don't think you
can lay in enough that, again,the easiest way to kill is one
we never speak, right? And thenI think this is part of that,
and and any of the and eitherone of these two in use
(47:17):
patterns, if I can, from ourstandpoint, it's 28 days. You
come out of this 28 days, it'snot it's not three inch weeds.
It's 28 days. I don't care whatyour 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 hellout of them, and I can get them
all the way to the ground,right? There's not enough leaves
(47:38):
for me that I can't get them.Even if you do some other things
not quite right? We can stillwork through them again. It buys
this window, buys this time. Ithink those sort of, I know
that's a bit a bit differentthan IPM says, see them, find
them, identify them, get them atthe right height and kill them.
We're not that fast, right? Ifthis thing, we can't miss,
(48:00):
right? I mean, that's the robustpre, you should target 20 in my
again, these are all just lineopinion. And from what I've seen
it if, if you want to, if ourtarget is always 28 days. Post,
and Sarah has seen our, seen ourwhen our, when our protocols
come, it's 28 days. I don'tcare. It's 28 days. Don't care
how big it is. Don't I want 28days. But when you spray it at
(48:21):
28 days, it's even if, even ifit's there. And she goes out,
and at 28 days, it rains forthree days. We're now at 31
days. Wow, that's too windy, andshe can't spray it right. Well,
now we're at 35 days. And that'swhy we mentioned that before,
and I saw Liam nod his head, arobust pre. Is why we do that. I
don't want my pre to diet 28days. I want my pre to diet 50
(48:43):
days, and I'm still going tospray at 28 days. Because I
don't ever want a gap. I don'tever want something to I don't
ever want to look at a weed andgo, boy, I don't know if I can
kill that one. I want to look ateveryone and go, this is a this
is done right? Or to have agrower. Best Day of My Life is
when a grower or a cooperatorcomes in, he says, I don't know.
(49:04):
I'm not sure why I'm sprayingthis. That's the perfect day to
spray it, right?
Sarah Lancaster (49:09):
We're retraining a lot of old habits.
Lynn Justesen (49:13):
Well, it? It? I I've lived all the way through
this cycle, Sarah, and I don'tthink there's probably anybody
else here that will match that Ilived through when we didn't
have any of these, right? Thethe biggest armor, and the
biggest one in my armor was whenI first started. I was there
when pursuit started. Right?Classic pinnacle, you know,
(49:37):
ultra Blazer was a pretty hotdeal at that point, then this,
this, this new pentamethyl andthis prowl deal showed up, and
that was, What do you mean? Idon't have to work it in. Well,
it's like trapline, but youdon't work it in and, and I've
seen lots of those where we didlots of robust things, did very
timely posts, and then, youknow, you followed up and did,
there's a fair amount of roguingthat still went on at that point
(49:58):
to clean Fields up. So we gotcompletely away from all that.
We've lost our marbles for a fewyears. We're we've dug most of
our way back to that, and we'reusing most of the chemistries we
use them, which is wonderful,because I know how to use most
of those. So it's worked its wayaround so but yeah, it's just,
and I know that's a hard one,and I know that's not it again.
(50:20):
It's it's not easy to to makeall those because we want the
easy button where we just sprayit once or twice and we're all
done. But I don't think that'srealistic in phase. So plus, as
you know, as Liam said, if wewant to keep this technology
alive for 510, 1520, years, wecan't be silly like that. You
have to be very, very specificand very pointed, so we'll get
(50:44):
there.
Liam Vincent (50:45):
Yeah, one of the things I've been mentioning a
lot is, as far as stewardship ofglufosinate goes, is, how can we
change people's mindsets abouttheir post emergence
application? How can we set uppost emergence applications for
success by using a robust pre sothat we have fewer individuals
(51:06):
that we spray every year. Youknow, these pres are phenomenal,
right? That they control so manyindividuals that we never see
come up. And the fact is, somepeople never get to see the
impact of that, because they'venever, I mean, they've, they've
see their field, and they see,you know, if they don't use a
(51:28):
pre or, you know, something keptthem out of the field, and so
they go into a total postsituation. But, man, it's
incredible. The amount ofselection pressure we can, we
can relieve by using those presand reducing, I mean, on an acre
basis, millions of fewerindividual weeds being sprayed
(51:49):
every year. So, yeah,
Sarah Lancaster (51:51):
incredible. All right, gentlemen, any final
thoughts before I ask you topoint our listeners to
additional resources.
Lynn Justesen (52:05):
Thank you. Thank you for the time. Thanks for the
invite. I truly appreciate it.Thank you for the time.
Liam Vincent (52:10):
So yeah, thank you. We
Sarah Lancaster (52:12):
were excited to get you guys on so and talk
about some new technology. Leeand Lynn, do you guys have any
websites or social mediachannels that you want to point
our listeners to.
Lynn Justesen (52:24):
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 listedthere.
Liam Vincent (52:38):
Yeah. And for me, I'd say go to Liberty Ultra
herbicide.com to find out moreabout Liberty Ultra
Sarah Lancaster (52:46):
Very good. Well, thank you again, guys for
joining us today. And you knowwe're thankful for the listeners
and our funding source from thenorth central IPM center. And I
guess we will shut this down fortoday and see everyone again
next time. Thanks.
(53:09):
Thanks for listening to the waragainst weeds podcast. We
appreciate support from thenorth central Integrated Pest
Management Center and thecollaboration with the Crop
Protection Network. At cropprotection network.org, you can
find this podcast, otherpodcasts, and a variety of other
(53:30):
pest management resources.
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