Herbicides Diggings

A farmer spraying herbicides in 1969 (cover page)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. This year (1969) was one of those early years of the rosy utopia for almighty herbicide, and you somehow feel the thrill of enthusiasm (much of it State-sponsored as you will learn later) behind these articles and ads. Finger pointing is of course the easy thing to do but it has to be toned down by reminding that this was another world then and everyone was happy beginning with the farmers whenever a new technical or chemical discovery seemed to solve age-old problems.
This post may help you understand why today the backlash is so strong in France and why biodynamic farming has such a success among the growers.

Spraying the fields with weedkillersWhen debating on herbicides, we immediately think to Monsanto, the convenient American bad guy, but we forget that France has been a pionner in the invention of weedkillers in the first place. Let's see the origin of our modern weedkillers : a book written by E. Holmes in 1958, "The Role of Industrial Research and Development in Weed Control in Europe" explains how two French scientists paved the way for our modern herbicides. Extract from the book :

European industrial research made its first significant contribution to modern weedkilling in 1934 with the discovery of the selective properties of dinitro o cresol (DNC) by the two French chemists, Georges Truffaut and I. Pastac (11), of Versailles. They were originally investigating the fungicidal activity of organic dyestuffs and this work led them to a study of the effect of these dyes on plant tissues. Truffaut and Pastac found that the susceptibility of plants varied from species to species and with the age of the plant. They came to realise that by selecting a suitable dye and choosing an appropriate dosage rate results of practical value to agriculture could be achieved, notably the destruction of wild mustard and thistles in cereal crops, without significant damage to the cereals. Agriculturists even at that time were well aware of the crop losses caused by weed competition in cereals, and this discovery in France was followed up by much development by W. E. Ripper and his co-workers of Pest Control Ltd., of Harston, England. They confirmed that the most effective of these organic dyes was DNC and they established the optimum rates, times and methods of application to control weeds in cereals. They also did a lot of interesting development work on dinitro o secondary butylphenol (dinoseb) but that was, of course, an American discovery. The disadvantages, however, of DNC were also high-lighted, particularly its toxicity to man and its failure to control buttercups and poppies. The growth regulators. By far the most outstanding advance in weed control methods was the discovery, in 1940-42 by my colleagues WXT. A. Sexton, R. E.. Slade and W. G. Templeman of Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. (9) at Jealott's Hill. England, that synthetic plant growth regulators were effective as selective weedkillers. This was a revolutionary discovery. According to your will (selon votre volonté)With the traditionnal State intervention and voluntarism (also named Colbertism here) that allowed France to develop for example its aviation industry, its own nuclear power technology and its high-speed trains, the authorities pushed for the rapid modernization of agricultural techniques. The fabrication and the use of herbicides and pesticides were thus actively promoted, using for that the French research centers, the universities and the State-sanctionned farmers unions. An interesting book relates all the little-known history of the French administrations's involvement in the massive use of herbicides and pesticides after WW2. "Pesticides, révélations sur un scandale français" (I guess you understand the title) was written by Fabrice Nicolino and relates how the French State, the research administrations and the chemical industry united to spread the Good Word after World War II. Fernand Willaume who became an agriculture engineer right after WWI and later worked as chemist for Pechiney (a heavy weight of the French chemical industry), was a pivotal individual who helped connect the Industry, the State research bodies and the ministry and push for more use of chemicals. As a result, the State reasearch entity INRA and the agriculture ministry worked closely together to encourage the production and use of chemicals by farmers. According to Nicolino, the INRA worked with the chemical industry to publish magazines like Phytoma, a publication which is still around today and has the motto of "defending the plants" (la Défense des Végétaux). In these sponsored professional magazines, farmers were encouraged to turn chemical intensive. According to Nicolino, the INRA even encouraged the use of particular chemical products that they considered excellent, if necessary by altering the data and the product studies so that they could pass the checks and get the agreement (that sounds similar to the emails affair of climategate...). Herbicides dangers : they said it all ![our product] strikes to the head and to the legs, says this ad on the magazine....they couldn't say it better and the farmers should have taken this warning at face value. The wide use of herbicides by unprotected workers and farmers in the 1960s' and 1970s' led to many cancer deaths and other nervous-system diseases years later. When you spend time in the countryside and know people here and there, you reall feel that the toll is still taking many lives among the aging farmers population. Although there is a lack of organized fight by farmers suffering from various diseases thought to be linked to herbicides & pesticides, voices have raised here and there about their fate and demands and sketch data are being pooled and help draw a picture of the situation. See this interesting page about the subject. Herbicides research lab in the 1960s'On page 14 of this special issue, near the picture of this research lab, I found a few lines that sound very premonitory : titled as "Un herbicide total et des cultures parfaitement résistantes", the writer Roger Faivre Dupaigre (an engineer working for the State research agency INRA) writes something which is almost a wishful depiction of the future GMO crops. My traduction :
A total herbicide and perfectly-resistant crops (title). These are the research objectives highlighted by M. de Gournay, research head at the INRA. This is the ideal solution to the question of the elimination of weeds among the crops. If on one side chemists work hard at creating new chemicals that can destroy a wide range of weeds, on the other side, geneticists have been slow until now to select crops which are more resistant to herbicides. Is there a solution for this problem ? It needs at least to be considered and studied.
Your wish come true, or how our wildest dream can materialize one day : This is just what the GMOs are about : selected crops that can stand high doses of herbicides and pesticides... No more plowing ?On page 13, the question of the future of plowing, or even of its survival is debated. In 1969, one year after the student unrest and mini-revolution of may 1968, the word contestation was en vogue and the article is titled "The contestation of the agricultural techniques". Mr Faivre-Dupaigre writes how Mr Drouineau, Inspécteur Général of the INRA (Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique) introduced his speech at the agri-tech convention in Versailles in february 1969 with these words : the chemists have placed a firecracker under the pulpit of the agronomy professors. He goes on with saying that the invention and use of herbicides has hustled the classical doctrines of farming techniques, techniques which were until now firmly established. Mr Drouineau goes on with highlighting the considerable progress made during the 20 past years on the herbicides research sector. These new techniques allowed a true revolution with important economic and social consequences. Contestation , revolution, unconventional techniques, this was all very modern and opened the way to singing tomorrows...
Further, Mr Récamier of the ENSA at Grignon (a State agrotech school) says that since a few years, thanks to the creation of certain herbicides, it has been made possible to grow cereals without prior plowing. He explains the results of research conducted on this question at the ENSA Grignon where they grew crops on the same field 10 years in a row without plowing. Atomix Canon, a well-named sprayerThe chemical industry is sometimes lyrical, did you know that ? The guy who has thought out the name of this sprayer was some kind of poet, "Atomix Canon", that's an inspired name indeed, and reading the text of the ad, you find that it is even more black-humored :
Its 40 meters of spraying range (augmented even more with a well-oriented wind) in the vineyard allows a rapid intervention in urgent cases, like when the ground is wet and muddy.
I love the mention of the light, well-oriented wind, there have been probably many tractor drivers who got atomized, sort of, by spraying with the Atomix Canon on their open tractors...with a not-so-well-oriented wind...

To show that nothing is simple, it must be said that from recent studies, the highest users of herbicides when you take into account the respective surface are the general public (amateur gardeners use tons of them for their gardens and alleys), the road maintenance services in the villages and small towns, and the SNCF, the French train monopoly. The latter literally poured tons of herbicides for years along its railroad tracks. According to some, this is a hot issue and a long-lasting pollution even though no mainstream media seems to look into the subject. here is a video showing a "train desherbeur" (weedkiller train) in a train station. This very rare video shows very interesting live images of a such a weedkiller train in use (the first train shot on this video, the 3 following trains being ordinary passagenr-trains - See the spraying coming out of the white train car). This is a TDGR (Train Desherbeur à Grand Rendement - High Yield Weedkiller Train). Here is a well-documented web page about these very special trains, once on the web page, click on the pictures for details. The SNCF was by the way sued and condemned last year for having polluted Stéphane Tissot's vineyard in the Jura. But most of this pollution goes unchallenged across the country I'm afraid. The SNCF is still marketing itself as ecology-friendly through ads like this one, that's pretty shameful (notice by the way the grass growing freely along the tracks in this grossly misleading ad).

Here is the complete Pdf file of the 1969 agriculture magazine. The Pdf is not of the best quality, the 40-page magazine was not in pristine conditions and I shot the pictures quickly with a hand-held camera...
Many of the writers in this issue have connections with State agencies or State-sanctionned interest groups like INRA, ITCF, AGPM (maïs), CETIOM, AGPB (céréales), AFPP, CTCD (reproduction animale).

P.S. :
The MDRGF, which is a non-profit group dealing with the danger of chemicals and pesticides in food, was sued by the FNPRT, the conventional (read : chemical) table-grape growers union, for having conducted lab analysys of their grapes for chemical residues (they had took samples of different table grapes sold in supermarkets for analysis on chemical & pesticides residues). It seems that transparency was not welcome here. Happily, the plaintiffs were rebuffed by the judicial system a few days ago and the FNPRT was even condemned for futile lawsuit. Here is the MDRGF press release [Pdf] on this affair (in French).

Comments

[William Burns]

This is a great post, and thanks for putting the complete PDF. I am writing a PhD on the history of 20thC agricultural production processes (mainly focussed on UK), and this French perspective is very useful. There is undoubtedly a (less-well enunciated) British Colbertism, or perhaps better 'techno-nationalism', in regard to pesticide use in the post-war years - synthetic pesticides being made from British coal tar and brine, in British chemical factories, and marketed at British farmers. Thanks again, best wishes from William.