The Year the Weeds Disappeared

This Week In Ag #178

“Everything’s just dead (except for the soybeans).”

There was an eerie tone in dad’s voice when he uttered those words. They came as we stared in amazement at the aftermath of using Roundup Ready soybeans for the first time. Sure, we knew Roundup was a contact, non-selective weed killer. We’d used it for years in various applications. But to see it transform an entire 60-acre field for the first time, that was a moving experience.

This year marks the 30^th anniversary of Roundup Ready soybeans. Has anything ever been as revolutionary and controversial to farming?

Due to their smaller height and slower growth (compared to corn) and wider row spacing (compared to wheat, oats and alfalfa), soybeans are a magnet for weeds. Grandpa used to say that we never saw foxtails until we started planting soybeans.

Before 1996, controlling weeds in soybeans was like a 6-month bar brawl. We’d throw everything at them. Apply pre-emerge grass control products (the yellow stuff that stained your sprayer and everything else it touched). Make multiple post-emerge applications with a broadleaf herbicide, then possibly apply another grass control product to control late-season escapes. Run the cultivator across the field (which created dirt mounds on the row that made harvesting with a non-flexing header a bit of a challenge), often multiple times. Walk fields and pull weeds by hand. We even used a rope wick system that Dad and I built to brush weeds that emerged above the crop canopy with herbicide.

Then, suddenly, weed control became easy.

You’d plant genetically modified soybeans into a clean field, after making a tillage pass or using a burndown herbicide application (often Roundup). Then you’d wait about six weeks until the field was so dirty with weeds that you couldn’t stand it, and apply Roundup. Presto. All the weeds – grasses, broadleaves, sedges, volunteer corn – died. You were left with a clean field of beautiful soybeans, just as a crop canopy was forming. No need to scout and identify specific problem weeds, then figure out which herbicide(s) to use.

Roundup Ready transformed farming in ways we never imagined.

No-till took off, as one of its main barriers to adoption, weed control, was now solved.

Easy weed control and no-till allowed you to farm more acres. Farming operations got bigger as time was saved and labor was reduced.

Certain problem weeds were no longer problems. Cocklebur, dogbane hemp and foxtails were the pivotal weeds on our western Illinois farm. They seemingly disappeared overnight.

The “systems approach” era was born. Instead of piecemealing various crop inputs, we chose a technology platform and utilized the chemicals and seed within that selected system.

Farming became more profitable. Weed control and labor costs dropped dramatically. Friends of mine who worked for Monsanto at the time told me they grossly underpriced the system. They based their pricing on the weed control aspect and failed to account for the larger benefit of enterprise efficiency.

Dad’s initial in awe reaction to the power of this new technology would prove foretelling. We couldn’t comprehend what we were seeing, or what it would lead to. Now, three deades later, we’re seeing the rest of the story unfold.