The crops in the regions covered by the mesonet include broadacre agricultural crops (typically wheat and other cereals, and canola, and pulses such as chick peas), vineyards, fruiting trees in the Riverland (i.e. almonds, oranges, stone fruits etc) and potatoes. Particularly the mix of crop types within a region can result in problematic spray drift. For example, summer spraying in broadacre farms to kill summer weeds can drift many kilometres into vineyards and greatly affect the broad-leafed grapevines just as they are starting to fruit.

The typical herbicides used are glyphosate and 2,4-D. I don’t think these are ‘bad’ per se as they are a necessary part of modern agriculture. I think the ‘bad’ part is more to do with improper usage. This is everything from droplet size, volatisation, nozzle size, boom height as well as multiple weather factors. There have been numerous education and awareness campaigns about these things which have led to improved management. The missing piece of the puzzle was that although everyone knew inversions were bad for spraying (a big culprit for long-distance spray drift), no one knew when an inversion was happening. Our mesonet and website have now addressed this 