 Hi, I'm Mark Hall with the Alabama Cooperative Extension System here with Ohio State's precision ag guru, Dr. John Fulton. Crop protection chemicals are one of the most controversial and expensive parts of growing a crop. John, with the introduction of new 2,4-D and dicamba-based products, precision spraying is more important and more difficult than ever before. Help us through this maze, John. Well, we have come to a point here with the products 2,4-D and dicamba to even where they're specifying the type of tip that you can use with it. And so not only do you got to read the label, but now they're starting to specify in this scenario to try and reduce this issue of drift and usage per se, you know, the tips. And we didn't put the basics in this particular thing because we were talking about spraying, but at the end of the day, before you get into any kind of discussion around precision or technology on that sprayer, getting your tip right, understanding your product, matching your product to the tip is by far the most important thing that you're going to do either as a grower or a commercial applicator. There's a lot of tip options out there today. There's been a lot of advancement in tips just in the last few years. And so the idea of drift, the idea of being responsible and understanding what the potential drift might be or offsite or off-target applications, what those mean to you become very important to me when we talk about precision and precision technology and we start to include spraying and we're talking in terms of pesticides, the herbicides and insecticides that we got to be on target. And anything, especially when we think about the spares of today and the timeliness, you know, and speeds, the cost and the speed that we need to run in order to cover acres, technologies and really an enabling piece to improve the target or the applicationist to the target we're after, whether that's weeds, to the weeds as the weeds themselves or the leaves of the plan or trying to get in underneath the cover and underneath and everything. So like you say, this thing with dicamba and some of these new technologies in terms of chemicals that are coming out, it's going to be very important to not only I think make a selection and proper selection on your tips, but I think documenting that application is going to become very important in precision technology is a way to be informed on documenting and verifying what went on. So, you know, Mark, let's just start with talking about crop protection in general. Here just as a U.S., I mean, it's important to the farmer. We've become very efficient. We use less than we used to. But in order to be profitable, you got to have a good crop protection plan both and it doesn't matter what kind of crop you're growing today. Herbicides themselves is a pretty significant business and the cost of that again can be very significant to the grower, just estimated. And for corn and soybeans in 2014 from Purdue, you're spending, you know, probably minimum $28 an acre and that could be much higher. Yes. So, you know, it's a significant part, but it's also making you profitable and giving you the proper protection for some of the pests that may be out there in the field. So to do that, I mean, the goal is right on these sprayers is to deliver product actively to the target. And we want to do that uniformly. And so not only having that tip selected, we want to operate or be engaged and be able to run that or operate that machine properly. And that becomes very important. And so as we think about that, to me, at least as we get to talk later in our discussion around this, the technology really helps that operator maintain the performance out there in the field and meets this goal set out by any spray operation out there. But, Mark, we've got a lot of challenges out there. We've got field attributes. We've got different crops in adjacent. We've got the cropping cycle, so timing becomes very important in the top right. And so, you know, and the machine characteristics. And I want to get into this. I mean, think about the machines today. We don't have the, you know, 60 foot pole types anymore. I mean, these guys, 90, 120, 130-some foot sprayers. And that's a large sprayer. And if you're going to operate that at 12, 15, 18, 20 miles an hour, a lot going on in a very short period of time. And you add in the environment, the wind and all that. I mean, there's a lot of challenges that go on with the spray application. And that kind of brings us to this and not only that, but, man, you've been out in a lot of fields during your career, Mark. Yeah, you hear about those nice square or rectangular ones out there, but a lot of places in a country you get stuff like this. That's the reality right there. And you're taking that big machine, you know, it's kind of like trying to stick a square peg in a round hole. I mean, it just doesn't fit very well. And but as an operator and thinking about some of these issues, whether it's drift or offsite movement or off target spraying, we can't have that today. The neighbors are watching, brother. And so this is reality. We're not square. We've got small to large fields. We've got terrain differences and even terraces. You know, think about South Alabama. And then we've got these conservation structures and we want to preserve those, the grass, waterways, the buffers that people invested on to be environmental stewards and limit offsite transport of nutrients and pesticides and stuff. So we want to conserve those as well. And so to me, the technologies today that we can put on these sprayers really help us better manage these conditions. I mean, here's just an example where we've got a grass waterway, we've got a buffering. And we just don't want to see this much, but you see where that grass waterway and that soybean field's been sprayed out and that defeats the purpose of it. Yes. And you can see part of that buffer strip where doing that outer edge of the field kind of got over into the vegetation. And again, today, Mark, and we'll show this once we get to talking about technology, I can make a map of that field of where I actually want to spray. And if any part of that boom moves into a no spray zone, it just shuts off. And think about eliminating that decision from the operator. It just really helps them do a better job. So we want to do that. But as I mentioned, the ability for these large machines and the terrain in this case and this example that they're put into, there's a lot going on. And if you're spraying a 120-foot boom, you want to take advantage of any technology to ensure good placement, proper boom heights, and et cetera that needs to happen out there, especially at 18 miles an hour. So that's what I'm kind of thinking about on precision spraying, just to kind of define as force for this session, Mark. Precision spraying incorporates all these technologies. To me, it's really about minimizing the amount of inputs. Really, it's an overlap reduction strategy. So we're not double or triple applying in areas. We improve the field application accuracy and the uniformity and allow the technology to help take some of those decisions that can be very difficult out of the operator. And what it also enables really is just this ability to collect verification data. I've got the as-applied data that kind of says what, when, where. And that can be very valuable if someone shows up and says, OK, looks like we had some drift and you can pull that out and said, I haven't been out in that field over those two weeks, so just that couldn't happen. That could be a true verification. So that's kind of what precision spraying is. And to me, some of the things that we need to think about and deal with, and kind of our part via this session, Mark, we'll get to talking technologies. John, this is so important that you can not ignore this technology. Some you can take or leave, but this you better do right every time. It is so important to protect the environment, to get along with your neighbors. This is number one. So we look forward to next time you're going to talk some more about precision spraying. And please watch the rest of our precision ag videos. Thank you.