Opportunities to Manage Herbicide Resistance through Area-Wide Management: Lessons from Australian Cropping Regions

Abstract

Herbicide resistance management is often understood as a decision for individual land managers, but their decisions have far-reaching impacts for social-ecological systems. Area-wide management can reduce these impacts by supporting many land managers to cooperatively work towards a shared goal of reducing the spread of resistance. The aim of this research is to identify what support is needed for area-wide herbicide resistance management in cropping systems. Data was collected from 84 interviews with growers, public land managers and weed management advisors. Sixty-five interviews were conducted across three cropping regions of eastern Australia—Darling Downs (Queensland), Riverina (New South Wales) and Sunraysia (Victoria)—and 19 interviews were conducted with stakeholders beyond these regions. The majority (51%) of interviewees expressed concern about the spread of herbicide resistance, but only 14% described involvement in area-wide resistance management programs. Area-wide management was mostly reported to involve sharing information among stakeholders, rather than coordination or joint activities. Key barriers to participation were perceived to be the diverse agricultural industries in each region and the costs of participation. Future area-wide management program designs need to build working relationships among diverse stakeholders, clearly define the boundaries of the program and demonstrate the benefits that accrue from participation.

Opportunities for Improving Herbicide Resistance Management Strategies across New Zealand’s Arable Sector

“…Suggestions to regard HR management as a collaborative effort are proposed for several reasons. Among those is the recognition that collectively held beliefs and norms associated with dominant weed management practices may hinder shifts towards alternative practices, such as overstated optimism in technological solutions, and thus need to be addressed [14,21,31,32]. As established norms shift, collaboration is needed across the wider agricultural system given the influence of other actors on farmers' HR management.…”

“…In emphasising the resulting "complex, multi-scale and collective nature of the weed problem", Bagavathiannan et al [37] (p. 343) thus call for best practice recommendations to be complemented by "landscape-scale design principles that encourage cross-boundary coordination and cooperation". However, achieving lasting collective action frequently proves challenging for a suite of reasons, including a lack of concern about the migration of HR weeds [31,37,38]. Successful collaboration is then often, at least partly, preconditioned on perceived mobility of HR weed populations, either through biological (e.g., pollen) or anthropogenic (e.g., farm equipment) transfer [26,39].…”