Pesticide Exam

I took the Ohio Commercial Applicator's Pesticide Exam. I am thankful to say I haven't forgotten anything since teaching that stuff in the 80's and 90's.

There were 100 questions on the core exam, 50 on the agronomic pests and 35 on the weed exam. I got through them in an hour and 50 minutes. I only left 4 blank and went back and gave my best guess. They were all converting pints or quarts to active ingredient per acre or looking up a law on the label.

The labels used were Warrior, Ambush, Canopy, Allegiance and the like. Of course atrazine and Round Up and Gramoxone examples were used on the test.

Key words are caution, warning, danger, spill, PPE or Personal Protective Equipment and related concepts. Most of the questions had an obvious sensible answer or 3 that applied and you checked the answer that included those 3 correct answers.

There were some "trick" questions of course like almost every exam contains but you could quickly eliminate one or two incorrect choices.

Farm math including square feet in an acre and pints, quarts, pounds and gallons are used in several questions. Most everything is there and I didn't even use a calculator which you can if you want.

Since we have our own sprayer now and the guys failed the first exam they took, I thought I better get us covered. I should know my score by Friday by looking it up on the Ohio Department of Agriculture website at www.pested.osu.edu.

The worst part is now I have to sit through boring certification training to keep my license. I remember trying to make that interesting when I was extension agent.

"Rules are for fools and we have too many rules and too many people making them that don't their butt from a hole in the ground."

That old addage might just apply in this case.

Ed