Producers, Weeds, and Society

From a sociological perspective, pest management issues are social issues. What is or is not a pest is defined socially. The management practices and technologies used to control pests are developed and disseminated socially. The positive and negative impacts of those practices and technologies are experienced socially. Thus, pest management can be seen as a social process. In this paper, we highlight weed management as a social process by presenting an analysis of primary data on how farmers responded to herbicide resistance in weeds from a sociological perspective. Our data suggest that farmers are aware of herbicide resistance, that farmers are hopeful that a new ‘silver bullet’ herbicide will soon be forthcoming, that the growth of large farms has contributed to this hope, and that structural conditions, as well as farmer attitudes, play a role in the selection of weed management practices.