Weed board accepts bid of $88,448 for chemicals

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The Stark County Weed Control Board accepted a bid of $88,448.17 on Wednesday for weed control for this year. This was the low bid for the amount of chemicals used for weed control in 2008, which is what the Weed Control Board used to estimate how much chemical will be needed this year.

The bid was from Crop Production Services in Spearfish, S.D., said Kaye Jessen, administrative assistant of the Weed Control Board.

Stark County may pay more or less, depending on the amount of chemicals they need to use this year. The chemicals used in 2008 cost $87,228.44, Jessen said.

The Weed Control Board has a cost share program with farmers and ranchers in Stark County who apply for financial assistance with spraying their pastures, said Leland Brand, a member of the Weed Control Board.

“We advertise that the funds are available on a cost share basis, 50-50, and their written reply will say how much they want,” Brand said, adding any taxpaying landowner in the county can participate in the program. He said the Weed Control Board pays for half the cost of the chemicals used to spray for leafy spurge, Canada thistle and other noxious weeds.

Duane “Bucky” Wolf, member of the Weed Control Board, said the cost share program encourages farmers to spray for weeds.

“We try to cost share with them to try to prevent the spread of leafy spurge and wormwood …,” Wolf said. “You can’t eradicate a lot of these (weeds). It’s more about control than anything else.”

Brand added while not all farmers and ranchers take part in the program, noxious weeds must be controlled.

“With no control, all you’d have was weeds out there,” Brand said.

He said in 2008 96 land owners participated in the cost share program in the spring, 105 landowners participated in the Canada thistle cost share program and 44 participated in the fall program.

He added the chemicals are also used to spray along roads in the county.

“You spray according to the development of the weed,” Brand said, adding they usually spray in May and June and in the fall, after the first light frost.

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