The finger was put on the nation’s ten top public enemy weeds today in an appeal for cooperation with enforcement agencies in fighting outlaw weeds and shrubs.
The U. S. Department of Agriculture accused these dangerous enemies of robbing the country of 4 billion dollars worth of food crops a year and of killing other plants and even animals and human beings.
Worst Offenders
The worst offenders were named by Robert H. Beatty, president of the Association of Regional Weed Control Conferences, an organization with more than 1000 members, the majority of scientists who devote most of their time to the weed problem.
The ten worst enemies are the following:
- Canada thistle
- Field bindweed
- Wild oats
- Giant (oxtail, Johnson grass, nut grass, quack grass, horse nettle, mesquite, and scrub oak).
Losses From Weeds
Beatty said it exceeded the total losses from all other agricultural pests, animal diseases, plant diseases, insects, rodents, and predatory animals.
Weeds compete with crops for water, light, air, mineral nutrients, and space; increase labor and equipment costs; impair the quality of crops and livestock products; and harbor insect and fungus pests.
They impair human health and have been fatal to human beings as well as to animals.
The halogeton, a recently much-publicized killer weed, was not listed in the worst ten because its depredations are confined to a comparatively small area (8,000,000 acres) in the West.
Regional Weed Control Conference
The Regional Weed Control Conferences include government, college, and industrial weed research experts, state weed law enforcement personnel, farmers and ranchers, and plane pilots who apply chemical weed control from the air.
Beatty, director of agricultural research for American Chemical Paint Company, Ambler, Pennsylvania. had a hand in discovering Weedone, the first 24 D weed killer, originated by the firm. It has greatly minimized the age-old struggle.
Extensive experiments are currently being done with a number of others. Beatty and his staff have a busy season ahead on the Ambler Company Research Farm, where large areas of weeds and crops are sowed and carefully studied in the staff’s effort to find selective weed killers, herbicides for perennials and woody plants, and soil sterilants.
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