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Book Review
| The War on Weeds in the Prairie West: An Environmental History. By Clinton L. Evans. Calgary, Alberta Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2002. xviii + 309 pp. Illustrations, plates, notes, bibliography, index. Paper $29.95.
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| This slender, pleasantly illustrated volume is perhaps the most complete examination of weeds in North America. Clinton Evans has given us more than the title implies, for this is a social and environmental history of weeds as integral components of British agriculture as it was transplanted to Ontario, and eventually onto the prairies. |
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Evans sees striking parallels between weeds and humans. Both are migratory, adaptable, aggressive colonizers of ecological niches. He aptly views weeds and humans as interdependent agents of North American agricultural expansion. Weeds were more than just "plants out of place." They were, and remain, plants that are highly competitive in disturbed environments—plants that thrive in agricultural settings. Both farmers and weeds were immigrants. Most weeds were European in origin and pre-adapted to "Europeanized" agriculture in Canada. Nearly all of the noxious weeds were imported by farmers themselves, along with the seeds they brought to their new farms. Weeds were literally and figuratively part of the cultural baggage of prairie settlers. |
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Evans argues that British farmers and agricultural reformers tended to view weeds as the inevitable consequence of agriculture—worthy opponents to be resisted and managed. Canadian farmers were both less able to manage weeds and less tolerant of them. The result was a more militaristic evaluation, which held that weeds should be eliminated and destroyed. Ironically, however, North American agriculture was more "weed-friendly" than its British counterpart. Because of the higher cost of agricultural labor, the need for farmers to clear forests in order to make farmland available, and fewer marketing options, frontier farmers in Canada and the United States were dependent on cash crops, particularly wheat. Mixed farming and crop rotation, along with intensive hand labor, had minimized the economic impact of weeds in Britain. In Canada, monoculture cropping made traditional weed control nearly impossible. |
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As agriculture expanded onto the prairies, wild oats and sow thistle, leafy spurge and Canada thistle migrated westward. The use of summer fallow, crop rotation, and improved tillage were even less common than in Ontario. Under these conditions, weeds were astonishingly successful in the West. The response was a flurry of noxious weed legislation and aggressive educational campaigns, all of limited success. Evans maintains that western Canadian farmers were on the verge of surrendering to weeds when 2,4D was introduced in 1945. Chemical weed control provided timely technological salvation, drawing attention away from the need to change farming practices, at least for a time. Farmers could continue their weed-friendly farming practices, as long as weeds did not develop resistance to herbicides. There is little reason to believe that this co-evolution of weeds and humans is complete. |
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As the author suggests, treating nature and humans as independent causes us to lose sight of the ways in which culture adapts to nature and how we, in turn, adjust to the natural environment. The War on Weeds is a superb study that should help scholars re-conceptualize the relationship between environmental forces and agricultural change. |
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Reviewed by Bradley H. Baltensperger, professor of geography at Michigan Technological University. Dr. Baltensperger is author of Nebraska: A Geography, and a number of articles on agricultural adaptations in the Great Plains. |
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