Lawn-care chemicals

But even the Scotts company, a dominant firm in lawn care chemicals and services, insists in its own messages to shareholders and consumers that beautiful lawns don t just happen. To make this landscape normal, as we shall see, requires repeated representation both of the aesthetic ideal and the enormous battery of consumer goods and services that make it possible. This closely echoes the thinking of geographer Don Mitchell, who observes that distinct, meaningful, cultural objects like the modern lawn are actively that culture is not... 

As noted in Chapter f, homeowners with higher incomes and higher property values are more likely to use lawn chemicals than homeowners with lower property values. The cost of lawn care chemicals certainly plays some role in differential use. According to the National Gardening Association, U.S. households spend 222 each on lawn care equipment and chemicals annually, the marginal cost of such an investment this climbs considerably in households with incomes less than 30,000. ... 

The salts content of soils may be markedly altered by man s activities. The effect of cathodic protection will be discussed later in this section. Fertiliser use, particularly the heavy doses used in lawn care, introduces many chemicals into the soil. Industrial wastes, salt brines from petroleum production, thawing salts on walks and roads, weed-killing salts at the base of metal structures, and many other situations could be cited as examples of alteration of the soil solution. In tidal areas or in soils near extensive salt deposits, depletion of fresh ground-water supplies has resulted in a flow of brackish or salty sea water into these soils, causing increased corrosion. 

WE SPOKE WITH SUZANNE at her home in 2001. A resident of a small Midwestern subdevelopment, she told us about her problems with lawn care, especially chemicals, and how she and her family have reconciled themselves to their use, despite disturbing effects. 

What is perhaps most remarkable is that people who use chemicals on their lawn tend to be more likely to believe that lawn care has a negative effect on local water quality than people who do not. This somewhat counterintuitive finding (consider that those who do not claim lawn chemicals are a problem are less likely to actually use them ) certainly suggests that values and ideas (what... 

Lawn chemical use is only one facet of lawn care, of course, and myriad other behaviors are relevant to understanding people s relationships with their lawns. Yet this initial result already upsets some simple assumptions about people s thoughts and actions, and raises some straightforward questions. What makes lawn people act this way What influences their behaviors How do people reconcile the complex outcomes of their decisions ... 

Moreover, Althusser argues, such systems of ideas must be material, not just synapses in the brain, since they are embodied, institutionalized, repeated, and lived. You have to act them out. Social agents have ideas (e.g., lawn aesthetics) but these are also actions (e.g., chemical application) and part of a practice (e.g., lawn care). These practices, Althusser adds, in his somewhat off-putting mechanical terminology, are defined by the material ideological apparatus, a whole system of ideas through which the elements of the economy (labor, chemicals, surpluses, etc.) are represented back to individuals as a necessity and a sensible, immediate, daily way of life (home, community, and nature). 

In part, this insistence was linked to a growing understanding of just how dangerous many early herbicides and insecticides were. Lead arsenate is typical in this sense. As a chemical widely advocated for lawn use, despite a growing acknowledgment of its associated health risks, it would set the precedent for the ambivalence associated with lawn care inputs, those inputs we use and desire despite anxieties and concerns. 

Enthusiasm for chemicals by the industry and the public, however, went largely unabated, and indeed the number and range of available and recommended chemicals began to multiply in this period, with specialized formulations targeted at specific weed and insect problems. Aldrin, carbaryl, diazinon, Dicamba, meta-chlorophenylpiperazine (MCPP), chlorpyrifos, Carbaryl, Pyrethrum, and Dacthal (DCPA) all found their way to consumer markets in the next few years, capped by the arrival of glyphosate (known most commonly by its trade name Roundup ). Despite setbacks (as in the case of DDT), the chemical approach to lawn care has become normal and widespread, with more households using these chemicals every year. 

The short list of chemicals represents only a small fraction of the inputs applied throughout North America. Lindane, malathion, MCPP, metolachlor, metribuzin, oryzalin, pendimethalin, and pronamide are just a few other of the dozens of formulations for insect and weed control available at any hardware or home maintenance store. All of them are toxic to some degree or another, and question marks hang over many of them as to the risk they may pose for people and the ambient environment. The potential hazards of each of the chemicals described above hints at the range of contemporary hazards associated with lawn care. 

In this sense, pesticide and fertilizer use can undermine the goals of lawn care itself, impoverishing the soil and plant health required to maintain turf. This effect, known as the chemical treadmill, emerged vrith the dawn of the green revolution in agriculture in the 1960s. The term was coined to capture the frustrating cycle where increased use of inputs leads to increased demand of the... 

This does not necessarily mean, however, that the risks of lawn care are necessary or inherent to the larger lawn economy. The continued innovation of treatments, after all, is generally hailed by industry as a victory for chemistry that has led to decreased risk. DDT is arguably less hazardous than lead arsenate, or at least more efficient. Discovery of the hazards of DDT led to less persistent chemicals. Glyphosate is likely more benign than 2,4-D, and so on. 

As with most consumer products circulating through the economy today, the chemicals that people use in lawn care travel through many hands prior to their final fate. This vast commodity chain is international in scope, diverse in players, and intricate in connections. Figure 5.1 maps out the multiple parties who... 

Next in the chain, supplying retail outlets, come formulators. These relatively few companies purchase raw chemical inputs for lawn care, combine and brand... 

As a result, hardware stores and nurseries-the traditional outlets for lawn care products have lost market share in chemical sales-and formulators have come to rely more heavily on a relatively smaller number of larger-scale customers home improvement and mass market retailers. A handful of North American retailers now account for most formulator pesticide sales, and mass sales and bulk wholesaling reduces formulator industry receipts as a result. Ten North American retailers account for 70% of sales from the Scotts Company, for example. Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Lowes, and the recently troubled Kmart provide 60% of sales, with Home Depot alone accounting for 28%. In fact, in 2003 Home Depot declared Scotts partner of the year. Competition among these retailers is intense, however. If any of these customers should falter, formulators will lose important outlets. 

But do lawn people really resemble those perfect figures that occupy the frozen advertising images of the formulator industry Do they embrace chemical inputs for lawn care warmly or with ambivalence Are intensive lawns managed for one s self, community, family, or some more instrumental economic reasons Put simply, how do lawn people see themselves ... 

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