Chapter 3 - Beginning the study of weeds

Abstract

This chapter presents an overview of the history of agriculture and the early phases of study of weeds in the United States. Agriculture can be described as having three eras. The first is best characterized as the blood, sweat, and tears era, when famine and fatigue were common and inadequate food supplies occurred frequently. Agriculture's second developmental stage, the mechanical era, began with invention of labor-saving machines. The effect of agricultural mechanization can be described by the changes in farm population that began in the nineteenth century. With the advantages of improving, available, and inexpensive machines, farming became more efficient and the need for labor was reduced. The chemical era of agriculture boosted production and costs again. The era really began when nitrogen fertilizer, a result of the Haber-Bosch process, became readily available and enabled realization of the genetic potential of the newly available hybrid corn. When nitrogen fertilizer was combined with hybrid corn varieties, first experimented with by Henry A. Wallace in 1913, yields went up rapidly. The agricultural revolution of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s transformed the practice of agriculture, reduced the number of people on farms, and significantly increased the productivity of those who remained. Developed country agriculture is now in the era of extensive and intensive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and is moving rapidly toward the next era of agriculture—the era of biotechnology—but weed management is still a major concern in all of agriculture. Weed science cannot claim the historical lineage of entomology or plant pathology, as weeds have not been studied as long.