Organic weed management: A review of the current UK farmer perspective

In organic systems, farmers, advisors, researchers, and even policy makers, often cite weeds as one of the major constraints to production. This despite the enormous amount of formal research, both conventional and organic, that has been undertaken on weed management. In addition to this a large body of informal knowledge based on farmer experience also exists. In this context this paper explores farmer perspectives on organic weed management in the UK. The results presented are from semi-structured interviews with organic farmers about their attitude to weeds, their weed management strategies including information on changes in their weed flora over time and their success and failures. The work was done as part of a larger project that is taking a participatory approach to research on organic weed management in which perceptions and attitudes are important when setting research priorities and agendas. As part of this approach, information has also been collated on where farmers turn to find information on weeds and how they would like to see research results relayed to them. Their priorities for research are also listed and the implications for weed research programmes are discussed.