Research Topics and Trials
Experience has shown that :
- Organic weed management is a very practical process and weed management technologies and techniques underlie many farm operations
- weeds have a direct impact on desired farm outcomes (yield, financial returns, happiness etc.)
- organic farms are complex systems and weeds are only one aspect of the farm production, ecology and socio-economics (but an important one!)
- Weed problems often have complex causes, and therefore cannot be solved by simple technological fixes. Solutions require an understanding of land history and rotations among other factors.
- As each farm system is in many ways unique it is often not clear where ‘scientific’ research can help in each case. Consequently farmers/growers do a lot of ‘practical experimentation’ with weed management on their farms (this includes observation, simple comparisons of different treatments and kit modifications).
- Researchers and advisors are best used to support on-farm practical research (through providing information, helping stimulate learning, monitoring, and assisting farmers assess the effects of their management interventions).
This website aims to do this by:
- providing access to information on weeds and organic weed management
- helping farmers and others to assess and evaluate the information
- helping to generate and develop new knowledge from the information.
This page provides access to some of the weed knowledge being developed (see below for direct links). Other pages give an overview of the approach taken to develop this knowledge and some of the activities undertaken. We are inviting farmers, advisors and researchers to become involved in this work, so have a look and contact us if you are interested.
Links to Knowledge Development themes:
As part of knowledge development effort we also offer to help organise workshops for groups of farmers or growers. These can focus in on solving particular problems (e.g. problem analysis of docks in pasture) or look at theme areas (costing weed management operations or using web based information for weed management). We are also happy to attend farm walks focusing on weed management in order to facilitiate discussion or feed in project information. If you have a group who is interested in developing workshops or running farm walks please get in touch with us. We are also willing to come and talk to groups of farmers about the trials. We are also able to help set-up trials and demonstrate how to monitor them. If you would like us to do this please contact us to organise the details. A factsheet on project activities is available here
Top of pageGarden Organic is the working name of the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA).
We are not responsible for the content of external web sites.
Comments
thank you alot
- jessica 13-07-2004
- Gasper Anthony 29-03-2006
YOUR LINKS TO OTHER SITES ARE NOT GOOD (SEE COMMENTS THERE). PLEASE ENHANCE THIS - IT COULD BECOME THE BEST WEED REFERENCE THERE IS, AND ONE IS SORELY NEEDED FOR ORGANIC FARMERS.
- S KEILY 04-07-2007