Between 1947 and ’52, he USDA registered almost 10,000 new, separate pesticide products and the list continued to grow through the rest of the century.By 1982, these percentages had risen to 95 percent of the corn and 93 percent of the cotton. In 1952, 11 percent of the corn and 5 percent of the cotton acres were treated with herbicides.It jumped again by 1960 to over 600 million pounds. It jumped to about 300 million pounds by 1950. Total pesticide production was below 100 million pounds in 1945.The total expenditures for pesticides increased tenfold between 19.Note that the scale on the chart is a logarithmic scale, so the actual increase would normally appear even higher. ![]() The studies had just not been done, yet.Īs you can see in the chart at right, real expenditures for pesticides – in the equivalent of 1967 dollars – shot up. In the 50s, very little was known about any problems with these chemical miracles. DDT had been used effectively during World War II to kill the insects that carried malaria and typhus, saving the lives of thousands of GIs. ![]() After all, the public could see the miracles happening before their eyes. In these early days, there were no downsides to pesticides. In the 50s, new and amazing products were being discovered, quickly tested and introduced to farmers and the general public. But by the end of the 60s, the Golden Age had started to tarnish. The 50s were the golden age of pesticides.
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