The arrival of weedkillers in the 1960s

Weedkiller in Touraine vineyard: March 2009

Herbicides Diggings

(Excellent article here from Betrand Celce on the introduction of weedkillers in the late 1960s.)

'Winter. Cold outside. Good time to stay indoors and dig into material for a potential post, listening to Internet radio, say KEXP Seattle, a long-, longtime favorite with great music and DJs like Kid Hops (Positive Vibrations) and Johnny Horn (Preachin' The Blues)...

Why not speak about herbicides for a change? Here are a few pictures and extracts from a French agriculture magazine dating from 1969 that I found somewhere; this is a special issue of Le Producteur Agricole Français (march 1969 issue) devoted to herbicides and weedkillers. What we see here on the fields happened just the same in the vineyards, farmers all over the country implemented the chemical revolution and unknowingly began to take huge risks for themselves by spraying from their open tractor.'