At this week’s Commodity Classic, the United Soybean Board announced it would expand its Take Action program to include fungicide resistance, a growing yield-robber in U.S. soybean production.

The Take Action program, an industry-wide partnership spearheaded by the soy checkoff, was mainly focused on battling herbicide-resistant weeds. Now the program will take the same approach to disease management.

“Herbicide resistance is a significant issue farmers face in their fields,” says Carl Bradley, extension plant pathologist at the University of Kentucky. “It’s possible that fungicide resistance is going down the same path. Now is our chance to get ahead of it before it gets too severe.”

Fungicide use on soybeans was not even on the radar in 2000. Then soybean rust appeared in 2004 and the game changed for farmers trying to protect yields. Fungicides were registered and their use often depended on commodity prices. Yet, even today fungicides are not used on even half of all soybean production, estimated Bradley.

Diseases can reduce yield by as much as 15%, he added. “We have different tools to manage diseases, like seed treatments and foliar fungicides,” he said.

If not addressed soon, farmers risk losing the few fungicides they have available.

“(Resistance) really comes down to losing a tool that is very valuable to us,” said Bradley. “If we lost fungicides as a tool it would be very devastating to farmers economically.”

Fungicide resistance was discovered in 1980. It’s usually more of an issue on intensively managed crops that may receive four or five spray treatments. The first documented case in soybeans appeared in 2010 with a fungus that causes frogeye leaf spot, in Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee. “To date we have found resistance in 12 different states,” Bradley added.

Farmers can use four steps today to help preserve current technology and avoid resistance:

“Many farmers may be of the mindset that a fungicide application will give a bit of a yield bump, even if diseases are not at economically damaging levels,” says Bradley. “But if they’re applying fungicides no matter what, they’re beginning to chip away at the tools they have to fight yield-damaging pathogen outbreaks. We want to encourage farmers to be mindful of what they’re using and when so they don’t lose what they have.”