Say goodbye to paraquat and get to know pelargonic acid herbicide! How do you use it effectively? Farmers and experts share field practical experience

With the ban on paraquat imminent, the Council of Agriculture began promoting pelargonic acid herbicide since early this year, and recently widely distributed discount coupons, making a bottle cost only 20 yuan, emphasizing that it is suitable for vegetable production areas. But farmers' evaluations of pelargonic acid are mixed, and many problems have also emerged: why can't weeds be killed? How exactly should it be used to be most effective? Will pelargonic acid acidify the soil? Will it harm the human body? If there are no subsidies in the future, is it possible for the price to decrease?

A farmer surnamed Ke in the Chiayi area reported: some grasses cannot be killed, and large ones will not die either. Moreover, pelargonic acid has a low dilution ratio and half a bottle is used up at one time. In terms of both effect and price, it is a notch behind paraquat, which farmers used to prefer. In addition, the sour smell is strong, making farmers' noses uncomfortable when spraying, and it is also very irritating when it touches the skin.

However, some people think pelargonic acid is quite easy to use. Qiu Fuyu, a farmer in Xuejia, Tainan, said, "As long as it is used in the right place, this stuff is effective." In his experience, spraying when weeds are still at the seedling stage works very well. It is best to spray when they have just emerged with two or three leaves, and not wait until the grass has grown strong before spraying. Regarding the irritancy of pelargonic acid, after using several brands of pelargonic acid, he found that each brand's formula is different. Some brands have lower sour smell and irritancy, which he can accept.

In response to a whole pile of questions, NewsMarket specially interviewed Hsieh Feng-chia, head of the Biopesticide Division at the Taiwan Agricultural Chemicals and Toxic Substances Research Institute, and also collected opinions from local farmers, farmers' associations, and agricultural supply stores, as well as from weed expert Huang Wen-ta, associate professor in the Department of Agronomy at National Taiwan University, to spark mutual discussion and seek improvement. In some paragraphs of the QA section in this article, Q represents questions asked by NewsMarket on behalf of farmers, and A represents Hsieh Feng-chia's replies.