Palmer Pigweed, a common weed found in cotton and soybean fields, was once fairly easy to control. Such fields, however, are now infested with the weed, which has become resistant to the herbicide that farmers typically use to kill it.
The problem, which is adding to farmers' financial woes, started in Georgia in 2005 and later spread to
Tennessee, Kentucky, South Carolina and other states.
The Memphis Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn., said:
"In Arkansas alone, the weed has invaded some 750,000 acres of crops, including half the 250,000 acres of cotton. In Tennessee, nearly 500,000 acres have some degree of infestation, with the counties bordering the Mississippi River hardest hit.
"The infestation is cutting farmers' cotton yields by up to one-third and in some cases doubling or tripling their weed-control costs.
"Reminiscent of the premechanized, preherbicide days when cotton was a labor-intensive operation, growers have resorted to hiring chopping crews. They're made up of laborers who generally are paid about $7.50 an hour to manually cut the weeds."
This isn't just a cotton-growers problem. Every year farmers, gardeners, etc., collectively use 100 million pounds of the herbicide Roundup, which goes by the chemical name glyphosate. The chemical is often used to control weeds in lawns and fence rows.
The Commercial Appeal went on to explain more about why weed is such a threat:
"It's so prevalent that cotton, soybeans and other plants have been genetically engineered to withstand it, allowing farmers to spray the chemical quickly and easily to kill weeds without worrying about harming crops.
" 'I think this threatens our way of farming more than anything I've seen in the 30-plus years I've worked in agriculture,' said Ken Smith, weed scientist with the University of Arkansas' division of agriculture.
"In fact, some officials draw parallels between the pigweed resistance problem and the effects of the boll weevil infestation of cotton fields in the early 20th century.
"What makes the weed such a formidable threat is its rapid growth rate -- more than an inch per day -- and the proliferation that results from a single plant producing 50,000-100,000 seeds."
