Summary: This week on the podcast, we look into how to utilise weather forecasts and get the latest information on crop competition trials conducted by YP AG. Agriculture Victoria Seasonal Risk Agronomist Dale Grey provides an excellent overview of what weather forecasts to take seriously and those which you should probably take with a grain of salt. Dale has a real knack for simplifying this complicated topic, so if you want to get a good overview of the weather, he's your man! Dale refers to no breaking rains yet in the interview but since the interview, there have been some breaking rains across parts of southeast Australia. You can check out the latest map for May rain thus far here: http://www.bom.gov.au/web03/ncc/www/awap/rainfall/totals/cmonth/colour/latest.hres.gif. Also on related climate topics, the 'Climatedogs' animations (key climate drivers)were updated for a national audience recently and you can check them out here: http://www.climatekelpie.com.au/index.php/climatedogs/. And if you'd like to keep up-to-date with all of Dale's weather forecasting, you can simply hit a button to subscribe to The Break here: http://agriculture.vic.gov.au/agriculture/weather-and-climate/newsletters. We're also excited to have Agriservices Agronomist Chris Davey on this podcast talking about crop competition at seeding time. Chris is based in Kadina, South Australia and he recently wrote a great article in YP AG’s agronomy newsletter, where he said ‘weed seed reduction starts at seeding’. There are multiple benefits of crop competition, including increasing crop yield in weedy situations, reducing weed seed set, and improving the efficacy of Harvest Weed Seed Control. Chris has kindly given us access to his article if you'd like to refer back to it after the interview on the results from YP AG's recent trials and some tips on crop competition. You can download it here: https://weedsmart.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/20190507-WeedSmart-AHRI.pdf
