Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T13:32:19.606Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Agricultural addiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2009

Jim Bender
Jim Bender
Affiliation:
Organic farmer near Weeping Water NE.
Get access

Abstract

Impediments to agricultural change extend beyond lack of appropriate research and the federal farm program to addiction to use of agricultural chemicals. Several recent trends in American agriculture have been caused by or have resulted in dependence on agricultural chemicals. They include the continuing separation of livestock from farms, farm size, separation of ownership and farming of the land, discontinuity of learned procedures, part-time farming, and certain aspects of noxious perennial weeds. This implies that prospects for agricultural change are related to the trends with which they are associated.

Keywords

agricultural chemicalschemical addictionlivestockfarm sizefarm ownershippart-time farmingnoxious weedsinformation exchange
Type
Articles
Information
American Journal of Alternative Agriculture , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , December 1990 , pp. 168 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1.See diagnostic criteria for psychoactive substance dependence in American Psychiatric Association. 1987. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Third Revised Edition, pp. 167–169.Google Scholar
2.Lewis, J. A. 1980. Landownership in the United States, 1978. Agr. Inf. Bull. No. 435. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
3. For a description of the properties of bindweed which make this characteristic possible, see Martin, J. H., Leonard, W. H., and Stamp, D. L.. 1976. Principles of Field Crop Production, p. 312.Google Scholar
4.National Research Council. 1989. Alternative Agriculture. National Academy of Sciences Press, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
5.Nelson, K. E., and Van Arsdall, R. N.. 1983. Characteristics of farmer cattle feeding. Agr. Econ. Kept. 503, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
6. For an account of frustration with lack of effectiveness of herbicides on bindweed at the Rodale Research Center's Farming Systems Trial, see Peters, S. 1991. 10 Years Without Herbicides. The New Farm, March/April, p. 9.Google Scholar
7. For one account of the rapid spread of bindweed between 1965 and 1980, see Rosenthal, S. 1983. Field bindweed in California - Extent and cost of infestation. California Agriculture 37 (9 and 10):16–17.Google Scholar
8.Strange, M. 1988. Family Farming: A New Economic Vision. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, Nebraska, and Institute for Food and Development Policy, San Francisco, California, p. 207.Google Scholar