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Chemical Weed Control in the Seventies¹

ABSTRACT

Herbicides constitute the most widely-used and rapidly-growing category of pesticides. They are widely used in industrial land management as well as in agriculture. Herbicides replace a wide range of more expensive or more hazardous weed control practices. The technology now exists for a doubling of the beneficial uses of herbicides during the decade of the 1970's. Shortage of trained personnel and insufficient diffusion of knowledge are currently the limitation on the further use of chemical weed control. Present herbicides, although effective, are far from ideal. However, the outlook for the discovery of more effective and safer herbicides is excellent. The principal limitations to further development of chemical weed control procedures are social and legal rather than technological. The use of herbicides and other agricultural chemicals is increasingly reviewed by the public as offensive, immoral, or dangerous. These views lead to political action in the form of restrictive, and often irrational, regulation. It is upon the resolution of social conflicts, more than on technical matters, that the future of herbicides depends.

¹ Paper presented Dec. 28–29, 1970, in Chicago, Ill., at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Section "O" Agriculture Symposium on "Agriculture and the Quality of the Environment in the Seventies."

² Professor of Horticulture and Associate Director, California Agr. Exp. Sta., Riverside.