The War on Weeds in the Prairie West

This book spans four centuries of weed history from sixteenth-century England to mid-twentieth century Canada. Features; Evans looks at topics such as weed biology/ecology, environmental history, herbicide development, noxious weed legislation, and the emergence of weed science as a distinct field of scientific inquiry; Provides an in-depth chronicle of the war on weeds that raged in Western Canada between 1800 and 1950 and the evolution of the relationship between humans and weeds; Provides an environmental history of weeds that covers the events in Upper Canada, the Prairies, and Northern United States; Gives a brief history of herbicides and their widespread acceptance by prairie farmers in the middle of the 1900s; Evans draws on extensive primary sources and considers the delicate connection between human culture and the natural world; The book is particularly timely because of debates on the use of pesticides and herbicide resistance crops, such as canola; Fills a need for a detailed survey of agricultural development and settlement on the Prairies.; In this provocative book, Evans suggests that herbicides have simply prolonged the war on weeds, and that by breeding herbicide resistance into crops, agrochemical companies are attempting to secure long-term herbicide and genetically-modified seed sales by forcing farmers to continue to fight a war that can never be won.