New Technologies and Approaches for Weed Management in Sustainable Agriculture Systems

Weed science has a long history of solving weed management problems for farmers. Over the last four decades most of the solutions to weed problems have been based on herbicide technology. Thus, most crop production systems in the United States rely heavily on herbicides as the primary method of weed management. During the last decade environmentalists, farmers, agricultural scientists, policy makers, and the general public have begun to question the long-term sustainability of conventional farming systems. The sustainability of these systems is being questioned because of environmental, social, and economic concerns caused by global competition, cost of production, soil erosion, water pollution, and concern over the quality of rural life. Weeds are the major deterrent to the development of more sustainable agriculture systems. Since weeds dictate most of the crop production practices (e.g., tillage, herbicides, cultivation, row spacing) weed scientists must become the leaders of collaborative integrated approaches to agriculture systems research. New crop production systems must be developed that are less destructive to the environment, are profitable, conserve energy, and support rural community development. The goal is to facilitate the development of ecologically based alternative methods of weed management that will support crop production systems that require less tillage and herbicide inputs. To accomplish this goal, research efforts must be radically expanded in weed/crop ecology and in the development of ecologically based technologies for weed management.