Trying to figure out mystery chemical

Question

If someone has a shuttle of chemical they don't know what it actually is, how do you figure out what you actually have, was recommended SGS labs out of brooking south dakota and sent them a sample but they will basically tell me how much of a chemical it has ,,,,if I specify what I'm looking for, they did tell me that the sample wasn't what it was labeled as it did not have any of the active ingredient claimed....but I'm still left wondering what I actually have. At 175/test, it was worth knowing why things weren't working like they were supposed to (nothing was dying), but I don't really want to throw darts. State extension's suggestion is to give them a sample and they'll do a symptom testing, but I was hoping for something more like an episode of ncis where **** says....."oh it's this." If any body has any suggestions thank you. Also if anybody has run into this situation before, how did you deal with the chemical company? The performance failure of ineffective burndowns and second passes is going to be fairly expensive for us this year.

Answer

Some clarification on post.   Situtation involved two totes of Generic glyphosate that had been carried forward into year.  Went into the season with 3 totes, two of which had been filled in 19, one had been filled in 20.   Initial burn downs failed, chem retailer was contacted, was contacted by an agronomist for the company that did a pretty good job of convinincing me that the reason the glyphosate wasn't working (would not kill grasses like rye trit or wheat which it's usually fairly effective on) was our water was too hard and I needed to increase my ams rates which we did, although I wasn't smart enough on the time to think....wait I'm not really doing anything differently than last year and it worked last year.  This corresponded with swapping out shuttles (one filled in 20) and we started getting good kills and thought well they were right, and earlier failure was user error.   Until we loaded the 3rd shuttle and went back to not killing anything and went wait a minute, yanked the shutttle and replaced it with a shuttle of rt3 bought locally,  and sent a sample from the non performing shuttle off for testing.  Test came back as glyphosate being non detectable.  Retailer was notified, and they said they'd make it right, but it's been crickets since, and I'm not sure what make it right means.....product replacement, loss coverage would be hard to calculate because what do you it compare it to when pretty much the whole farm was loaded up and sprayed.  All I know is that i've never grown so many weeds in my life, and in a year when it actually rained and we should be hitting home runs, we've got weed chocked fields.  I pretty much expect the company the product was purchased from to  hide behind a fairly lengthy limit of liability form that had to be signed as part of the purchase agreement, that states the retailer is not liable ofr anything beyond replacement of product found to be defective, but does that still apply if you are supplied something other that what was purchased?

Answer

Try your state chemist office they should be able to help you.

Answer

I would be upfront with whoever I purchased the chemical from. They cannot make it right if they do not know about it. I would not give the tote back until everything has been discussed and a resolution has been agreed upon. Your vendor should be able to send a sample back to the manufacturer and/or packager to verify that it is not what it is labeled. I would see no reason why they would not be able to provide you with the results of the testing. I would think they would make it right by pay for / supplying a cleanup pass of chemical and/or make a yield adjustment. I would take plenty of pictures and document everything.

Answer

I'm posting this anonymously because I work in the industry. 
 
 I would second the advice of working with the retailer. You could spend a lot of time and money trying to figure it out. But the vast majority of retailers want to continue to do business with you and will be willing to make things right. And they are going to have a better idea of what happened than you are. You are just speculating at this point.
 
 I got a kick out of your Abbey from NCIS reference. My wife is a big fan and she starts binge watching those shows every time I'm gone for a busy season at work. But that being said. I think a lab, such as SGS, can get to the answer, but the process of elimination is that they have to test for every possible chemical that it could be. And, unlike a soil test, where thousands of panels for Nitrogen or Phosphorus are coming at the lab at ounce and they can set up for those tests at scale. If you are the only one who has asked for a specific test this week or even this month. Than they have to set everything up to run that one test. That's why it costs almost $200 a test.
 
 To your question about how to deal with the company. If you are working with a shuttle that they provided. It should have seals on it that correlate back to records on when it was filled and what it was filled with. If those seals haven't been tampered with, they should have pretty good grounds for figuring out what is going on. And as I stated before. I would operate on the assumption that they want to do business with you in the future. If you come in with a test that shows that the product isn't what they think that they sealed into the shuttle. They should be tripping over themselves to fix this.
 Hope that helps!

Answer

We had issues with chemical theft.  Ordered 24d from a company online.  Manufactured box was sealed but the 2 1/2-gallon jugs inside, the seals were carefully broken, and 1/4 to 1/2 gallon was taken from each.  Husband blamed the company I bought it from so next time he picked up 24d at local farm store.  Same thing when I opened the lid, the seal was broken and chemical was missing.  It seems this could possible an inside job at the manufacture.  So now, we open the lids, check the seals and watch weights.  We are just a small operation, but I am sure this could possibly be a problem with larger containers too.  Word of the wise something to watch out for.

Call (844) 200-FARM

Trying to figure out mystery chemical