Dave Cole is worried. As a crop consultant with many no-tillers and president of Independent Technical Agricultural Consulting Of Wisconsin, Inc., (ITAC) in Prairie Du Sac, Wis., this crop scout with 40 years of scouting experience says some weeds, while they’re controllable today, have the potential to eventually be resistant to most forms of weed control.

“Resistance to herbicides can happen in as little as six applications,” he notes, “particularly with ALS inhibitors.”

Before you take a sigh of relief that your fields are safe because you use Roundup, Cole says not to be quite so confident just yet.

“Monsanto recently announced that there’s another weed besides Australia’s ryegrass that’s resistant to Roundup,” he warns. “It’s goosegrass, one of the world’s worst weeds.”

A Nasty Weed. Malaysian farmers have experienced a tough time with this pest, as goosegrass has spread from 1 to 12,500 acres in that country in no time at all.

“You’d probably look at it and say, ‘My God! It looks just like crabgrass!’” Cole explains. “And you’re right—it does look like crabgrass, except the weed will be greener and have more of a tuft appearance in the field when it grows. One plant has the capability of producing 40,000 seeds. If you have 50 plants escape on 1 acre, you would have one plant every 871 square feet. You could have 2 million seeds per acre in one year.”

Scary News. Cole maintains that anytime a particular herbicide is used, no-tillers are taking the risk of…