Pest control: a new industrial revolution.

Industries such as manufacturing, mining, and transportation have been experiencing mechanization and automation for well over 100 years. Agriculture, in contrast, has lagged behind and only in the last 30 years have these processes been adopted. Long considered a way of life rather than an industry, farming is now becoming as highly industrialized as the traditionally organized businesses. Pest control, one of the later developments of the agricultural industry, has had a tremendous impact on farming methods, and in turn on crop production. Many of the high yields being reported almost daily in the agricultural press are the result, not alone of pest elimination but also of the 'new agronomy', that is, closer more regular spacing of plants, mechanical thinning, and the higher fertility level which these new methods allow. Yields of all of our staple crops are being obtained which were unheard of 20 or 30 years ago. Herbicides, with which I am most familiar, have increased from half a dozen products available in the early forties to over 100 well-established chemicals. These are presently available in literally thousands of formulations. What are some of the new developments in this rapidly progressing field? (i) In addition to the acid-arsenical formulation and sodium chlorate, we now have translocated herbicides to handle practically all known perennial weeds. A few of these are 2,4-D, 2,4,5-T, MCPA, amitrole, dalapon, 2,3,6TBA, dicamba, the methane arsonates and picloram. (ii) We now have selective foliar sprays to control many annual weeds. These include barban, bromoxynil, ioxynil and propynil, to name only a few. (iii) We have a great number of soil-borne selective and non-selective herbicides to handle special weed problems in crops and in non-agricultural situations. These include the urea and uracil herbicides, the triazine materials, a number of carbamates, substituted amides and phenols. (iv) A number of the newer chemicals are proving effective in killing aquatic weeds in lakes, reservoirs and rivers; some of these are paraquat, endothal, aqualin and fenac. While this arsenal of weapons for fighting weeds has revolutionized many aspects of crop production including range management and forestry, pesticides have brought many new and perplexing problems. Volatilization drift, misapplication and soil residues are some of the aspects that have plagued the people who apply and use these new chemicals. This is the problem that is worrying biologists, ecologists and public-minded people