Title: Farmers and environmentalists respond differently to herbicide dependence
[Opinion by David Low] -- According to the most recent figures published by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA), herbicide sales fell by ten per cent during the last financial year. Nufarm, Australia’s largest domestic pesticide manufacturer, has experienced more than a halving of its stock value on the ASX over the last year. Are agrochemical sales hitting a bad patch, or is there a more systemic issue at work? In this opinion piece, I argue that the real reason for these declines is that synthetic herbicides are a technology that has passed its expiry date.
The fact that herbicides are losing market influence ought to come as no surprise. The world’s major pesticide companies have been telling us for decades that new toxic herbicide molecules are too expensive to develop and that regulatory barriers to the necessary markets are too severe (Sparks and Bryant, 2021). Simultaneously, and perhaps confusingly, pesticide manufacturers have consistently argued that herbicides are a special vehicle of technological progress needed to prevent global starvation. We appear to be between a rock and a hard place, according to the pesticide industry.
These days, however, there are also growing concerns related to the challenges of climate change, biodiversity decline, and widespread findings of agrochemical water pollution. Herbicides are increasingly seen as a leading cause of these problems rather than a solution. Thus, a technology that once embodied ‘progress’ now also embodies many well-accepted environmental problems. A new consensus is emerging; synthetic herbicides are an out of date and highly dangerous technology that is standing in the way of innovation, particularly in the area of sustainable agronomic methods (CSIRO, 2025).
Image credit: Simon Kneebone 2025.
Innovations, however, can be slow to emerge, especially when they replace existing technologies. For example, discontinuing a single chemical can paradoxically increase the stability of the broader agro-chemical system by underpinning a productivity-oriented systems that remains reliant on chemical inputs (Cardon et al., 2025). So, while biological alternatives to most pesticides currently exist, these alternative products and methods may have been used in parallel with synthetic herbicide technology systems for many years, albeit in niche areas, for example, in the organic, biodynamic and/or agroecological sectors.
As a result of the above parallel use pattern, alternative weed management techniques that operate in niche markets have to date not threatened herbicides as the dominant technology. Rather than compete with pesticides, biological methods have been ‘integrated’ with chemical pesticides. This integrated approach was needed politically to defend the idea that farmers should be able to use the full range of technical solutions available to them to protect their crops without discrimination (Goulet, 2022).
The above complementary framing of herbicides with biological systems and inputs has made it possible for most farmers to support the development of biocontrol while also relying on the existence and reputation of synthetic chemistry for which an industry and public policy support system is already well developed. This approach has allowed biological alternatives to herbicides to be used, but they were not seen as a technical threat, nor are they seen an explicit hindrance to the industrial agricultural regime and its chemistry-based technologies in general. Thus, biological inputs and synthetic herbicides designed to be used with GMOs are both considered essential to agro-industry. A ‘broad church’ approach has been adopted within which everyone gets along without conflict, at least, that is the cheerful hope.
The above is also why the growth of alternatives to synthetic herbicides has largely gone under the radar. Most importantly for my purpose, the occlusion has also meant that it is politically awkward to measure both conventional chemistry and alternative bioinputs. More importantly still, the concomitant decline in chemical agro-techniques is made almost impossible to identify and discuss, especially in Australia (Low, 2023).
As Goulet (2012) has also argued, the Australian slow crawl of, “innovation through withdrawal” operates largely by making some things visible, and others invisible. Thus, rather than institute bans of key molecules such as glyphosate or paraquat, or attempt to create polices and transition plans to keep the sinking agrochemical ship steady, the transition takes place through a different set of deflecting associations. For example, these days farmers talk of ‘soil regeneration’, ‘carbon farming’, ‘reduced greenhouse gas emissions’, and so on. To protect themselves and the system they operate within against the knowledge and pain of loss, people tend to focus on other factors than the object of their loss. This deflection makes the loss of whatever was once so intensely beloved less painful, or in our case, the emerging loss is made less visibly disruptive.
Despite the above hidden dimension of the agrochemical transition currently underway, the more obvious environmental and health advantages of alternative biological technologies are now beginning to gain traction, even in official circles (CSIRO, ibid.). Despite the operative interest in keeping the transition ‘under wraps’ to prevent alarm, changes in consumer preferences and increased regulatory oversight measures are now interacting with our historically favourable herbicide associations to create market changes that are ramifying throughout the system, and at multiple levels, for example, in the domains of health, safety and nutrition (e.g., see MAHA Commission, 2025).
Another reason for the above expansion in our awareness of the technical alternatives and consumer preferences for non-synthetic herbicides has been a parallel expansion in farmer’s ecological awareness. This uplift in farm eco-literacy has been significant in the present context because biological inputs are alive. Working with living entities links well with emerging notions of living farm systems, sustainability, regeneration, and most importantly, productivity increases (Goulet, 2025).
Farmers are learning that biological products and biological methods cannot simply be sprayed onto lifeless farm systems and be expected to work almost instantly in the same manner synthetic poisons have. Their agronomic systems need to be prepared and nurtured into accepting new life-forms. Thus, the more health their farming system possesses inherently, the more successful the use of biological technologies will be.
This increased level of environmental and ecological knowledge from farmers has therefore underscored the shortcomings of chemical pesticide use and has paved the way for a successful incursion of bio-alternatives. Synthetic herbicide sales are down, biological methods and bio-product sales are booming. This market use change has occurred largely unnoticed in Australia for two main reasons.
First, Australian policy-makers have traditionally taken a ‘hand’s off’ approach to the agricultural sector, especially when it comes to pesticide use. The dominated economic position has been that agriculture and chemical input stakeholders should self-regulate. As such, government believes it should keep out of the way out as much as is politically feasible. For example, even a casual scan of Australian government policy document and ‘action statements’ will fail to turn up a reference to pesticides. The word pesticide does not exist in Australian government policy circles at any level.
Second, herbicide sales by brand, chemistry types or mode of action are not reported on in Australia in an aggregated manner (Low, 2023). Thus, and as noted earlier, despite the emerging transition to biological methods and products in Australia, no distinction is made between farm inputs and bioinputs and they are not quantified in a distinct manner. This oversight is structurally entrenched. All bioinputs must be assessed and registered by the APVMA under the Agvet Code definition of an, “agricultural chemical product”. Any bioinput designed to have an agronomic property is therefore deemed under Australian regulations to be a chemical input. Consequently, there is no means available to track the market differential between chemical inputs and bioinputs, let alone biological methods, such as the use of cover crops that are also displacing synthetic herbicides.
As a proxy measure in this paper, I have used the decline in chemical herbicide sales as an indicator of a generalised move towards bioinputs and biological methods. Put simply, overall agricultural output has increased while chemical herbicides sales have decreased, suggesting bioinputs and biological methods are leading the transition to increase productivity in agriculture in Australia.
As a concluding observation, while the above analysis suggests that the farming sector will not (for the most part) actively resist an ongoing silent decline in herbicide use, the significant self-interest of the so-called ‘invasive species’ industry sector will. Somewhat ironically, the environment sector faces losing the most from a decline in the use of polluting chemistry-based systems for killing unwanted life.
It is crucial to see how herbicide reduction understandings are applied differently between social sectors in Australia. My analysis suggests that while farmers are leading the way to herbicide eliminations, so-called ‘conservationists’ can be expected to push back strongly against the emerging consumer preference for less polluting management options. For example, rhetorical strategies stressing ‘biosecurity’, ‘garden escapes’ and ’emergency pesticide use’ will increasingly be mobilised by environmentalists to ensure they can continue to use synthetic poisons in environmental management. The dominant political narratives and lobbying for more money to ‘kill invasive species’ can therefore be expected to hinder the efforts of farmers to farm with fewer synthetic inputs.
The current situation in Australia is in stark contrast to the situation in Europe where pesticide reduction is visibly opposed by farmers, but not by environmentalists (Bazzan, Vogeler and Kuenzler, 2025). In the EU, environmentalists play an important role in pushing forward an agenda for agrochemical reform. They make use of green political representation to compensate for weak or opposing farmer interest, and they work hard collectively to drive pesticide policy changes. Thus, in the EU, environmental interest groups are able to exploit high public concern over pesticide pollution to build coalitions among a wide set of interest groups, green parliamentarians and the public.
Image credit: Simon Kneebone 2025
In contrast to Australia, EU environmentalists have created a powerful advocacy force that lobbies successfully for agrochemical policy reforms and tied implementation assistance. Resistance to pesticide reform by Australian environmentalists is, however, perhaps understandable. There is little industry or government assistance directed at providing environmentalists with alternative biological products, nor teaching them how to use biological methods that are tailored to their specific conservation requirements. As a consequence, in Australia it will be up to the farming community to explain to the environmentalists how to manage life without poisoning it.
References
Bazzan, G., Vogeler, C.S. and Kuenzler, J. (2025). Conditions favoring the reduction of pesticides: A qualitative comparative analysis of EU member states. Review of Policy Research. [Downloaded 27 June from https://doi.org/10.1111/ropr.70021]
Cardon, V., Levain, A., Pellissier, F., Dedieu, F., Joly, P. B., & Barbier, M. (2025). Continuous discontinuation: The DDT ban as a framework for the perpetuation of pesticides use. Environmental Sociology, 1–12.
Goulet, F. & Vinck, D. (2012). Innovation through withdrawal: Contribution to a sociology of detachment. Revue française de sociologie, 53-2,117-146.
Goulet, F. (2022). The role of alternative technologies in the enactment of (dis)continuities, in Zahar Koretsky, Peter Stegmaier, Bruno Turnheim and Harro van Lente (eds.), Technologies in Decline. Routledge, London, pp. 167-184. [Downloaded 9 June 2025 from DOI: 10.4324/9781003213642-7]
Goulet, F., Fonteyne, S., Ridaura, S.L. et al. (2025).The emergence of microbiological inputs and the challenging laboratorisation of agriculture: lessons from Brazil and Mexico. Agriculture & Human Values, 42, 369–381.
MAHA Commission (2025). The MAHA Report: Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, White House. United States of America. [Retrieved 21 June from https://coilink.org/20.500.12592/47435vb on 21 Jun 2025.]
Sparks, T. C. & Bryant, J. (2021). Crop protection compounds – trends and perspective. Pest Management Science, 77(8), 3608-3616.
