We spend a fair amount of time each year killing weeds. Not by choice. This is a picture of grass growing up around young cantaloupe plants.
If you remember Scripture, apparently we have had weeds since the moment we were tossed out of Eden. In Genesis 3 God's curse to Adam for eating the fruit is-
"Cursed is the
ground because of you;
In toil you will eat
of it
All the days of your life.
Both thorns and thistles it shall
grow for you"
Genesis 3:17-18
For
those of you who question Scripture, I live with this reality almost every day
of the year. Either we are killing weeds, we just killed weeds, or we are
planning to kill weeds. This is no joke. Weeds block out the plants we are
trying to grow. Weeds take water and nutrients that should go to the crop we
are trying to grow. They make a mess in our harvesters when we are trying to
pick cotton and they lower the quality of our crops.
There are two ways to kill weeds, and neither one involves wishful thinking.
Those things just will not kill themselves. We can either kill then
mechanically or chemically. Those are our two choices. Like I said, they just
will not kill themselves.
To kill them mechanically we use shovels, hoes, mechanical cultivators
and plows. It takes a lot of sweat, muscle power, diesel and raises a lot of
dust.
In the old days mechanically killing weeds was all we had. Today we can
kill them chemically. Many non-farmers freak out when we mention herbicides. I
get it. There was a time before I started farming. But, as I mentioned earlier,
the weeds will not kill themselves and they have to be eliminated. Yes, I
us herbicides. Not necessarily because I want to. Nobody could want to farm
organically more than I do. But, because the weeds gotta go. [A side note-
there is one other way to kill weeds. Burn them. An organic almond grower I
know burns weeds instead of using herbicide. You organic types tell me- is that
a good trade off? He is using less herbicide. But, isn't that affecting
greenhouse gases? Sometimes those are the choices you get. But, I digress.]
I just wanted you to know we still have to deal with the basics. To grow
your food I have to kill weeds---and my choices are limited.
For
those of you who are concerned about the tools of modern agriculture I will
repeat the following quote-
Wise Words from Dixie Lee Ray
Dixie Lee Ray was the former
Governor of the State of Washington and the Chairwoman of the Atomic Energy
Commission. As a farmer I have sure appreciated the words she wrote in her
book, Environmental Overkill.
“Sometime in the
future, when all the accomplishments of the 20th century are
recorded for posterity, it will finally be acknowledged that our greatest
achievement by far has been the introduction of high-tech, high-yield
agriculture. Measured in terms of benefit to human society, an adequate diet of
nutritious, abundant and affordable food eclipses all other developments of
this most remarkable century. Neither computer technology nor transistors,
robotics, advances in communication and transportation, life saving antibiotics
and modern medicine, nuclear energy, synthetics, plastics and the entire
petrochemical industry rank as high in importance as the advances in food
production. And all these other wonderful breakthroughs probably would not have
happened without a well fed population.”
p.67
Environmental Overkill
Dixie
Lee Ray
Regnery
Gateway
1993
