When Mississippi cotton farmer John Seely agreed to participate in a trial using the MagrowTec system at his farming operation, Buford Lakes Planting Company, he didn’t have very high hopes.

“My initial expectations were that we would save 15-20 % on chemicals and the yields would be reduced by a comparable amount,” he says. He was in for a surprise.

MagrowTec dealer Vantage South set up the trial on an 80-acre field to comparing the performance of a conventional sprayer to a sprayer outfitted with the MagrowTec system. Cutting the field down the middle, they replicated the same rate on both sides. On an additional strip, the MagrowTec rate was reduced to 75%. According to Seely and his farm operators, the results were “shocking.”

“There was a significant yield bump with the MagrowTec system,” says Seely. In fact, the reduced-rate application increased yield by 316 pounds per acre.

Later use of MagrowTec on the farm showed similar results. Operators went on to achieve the same kill rate they had previously gotten with conventional spraying using half the water and half the herbicide in conjunction with the MagrowTec system.

“From a numbers standpoint, you add that up over the course of a growing season, and your savings on just chemical costs alone can be exponential,” says Buford Lakes operator Taylor Miller. “You can save a lot of money using MagrowTec. “

The Buford Lakes team was also impressed with the decreased drift.

“There was hands-down a night and day difference in the drift,” notes Miller.

Fellow operator Matthew Garrard agrees. “Even spraying with 10-15 mile-per-hour winds, there was no drift. It didn’t hurt even one plant on the outside edge of the field.”

Vantage South owner Brian Smith also points out the ease of use for MagrowTec. From the installer to the operator to the famer, MagrowTec is user friendly.

“It works exactly how it says it works,” Garrard says. “The assembly is simple. Cleaning is simple. It’s no added pressure to the operator. There’s no buttons to be switched.”

“Just put it on your sprayer,” Miller urges. “It’s going to save you money. You’re going to use a third of the Round-up that you usually spray with, and it’s going to kill the weeds better because the water droplets go straight to the target weed.”

“After all,” he continues, “the ultimate reason that you’re farming is to make money. To put food on your table. If there’s a tool out there that’s going to allow you to increase your chances of making money, then why wouldn’t you use it?”

“There are a lot of products on the market that have big claims but don’t produce at the end of the year,” says John Seely. “This is different. Less time in the field. Less chemical. Less water. No moving parts. Better yield. Is there anything else to say?”

As a grower, you know all too well that the way you prepare a field for planting is going to have a significant impact on your yield potential at the time of harvest. But there are costs involved in field preparation, too. Many growers plant cover crops ahead of spring crops to help retain soil moisture, add nutrients to the soil, and prevent erosion. Prior to spring planting, though, that cover crop must be eliminated so it doesn’t compete with the new cash crop for water and nutrients. A burndown herbicide application is usually used for the field clean-up, allowing new seeds the best start to grow, flourish, and become profitable.

For many planters, like Brad Ward who farms 4,000 acres of cotton and peanuts in Atmore, Alabama, it often takes repeated spray applications to be effective at eliminating a cover crop. It’s been different this year, though, since he added a MagrowTec system to his main sprayer. When Ward sprayed burndown herbicides to kill his cover crop of oats, he covered his fields partially with a conventional sprayer and partially with the sprayer outfitted with his new MagrowTec system. The contrast was striking.

“I was driving down the road a few weeks later and noticed that part of the field was starting to put out some new growth, which meant I would have to spray again, while another section was dead as a doornail,” Ward remembers.

“That’s when it struck me that the section without any new growth was the area we had sprayed with the MagrowTec system.”

He ended up having to take a second pass on the part of the field sprayed with the conventional sprayer, but two months later the MagrowTec-sprayed area still showed no signs of new growth. Ward is pleased with the savings of time, labor, products, and money he has seen with MagrowTec during the burndown process.

“I probably saved about $11 an acre by only spraying once,” he says. “With 2,200 acres of cover crop, I saved $24,000, so I pretty much paid for the MagrowTec system with what I saved on this burndown.”