United States weed control practices

In an attempt to obtain a fairly good nation-wide picture of the present practices in regard to weed control in forest nurseries and methods of application of the herbicides, the author wrote to some 20 nurserymen and investigators, representing major geographic regions of the United States. The results of the survey are reported below. 

Herbicides reduce mechanical tillage costs (2 ). Each year in the United States, 250 billion tons of soil are moved, much of it several times, in tillage and cultivation operations. This amount of soil would make a ridge 100 feet high and one mile wide from New York to San Francisco. The movement of this soil each year is the world s largest materialhandling operation. At least one-half of this soil-moving function is practiced solely for the control of weeds. 

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