Sure true that farmers have been forced to use synthetic or mined fertilizers and manmade molecules to stay competitive in the global food market. I am not complacent about that development. Seems like just yesterday I was dusting potatoes with Paris green in the WWII Victory Gardens and a few years later filling gallon jugs with DDT laden fly spray for the cows. Then came Silent Spring and feeding the world got very complex. Today around here we have black flags flying around the cropfields as warnings that Dicamba has been mixed with the usual Glyphosate when sprayed on genetically modified ("Round Up Ready') soybeans and corn. Farmers, not environmental whackos, are suing one another because of Dicamba drift.
All this because of the development of herbicide resistance in weeds. Another rather frightening way to fight such resistance is to use compounds that stop photosynthesis completely. This is what we call "Double Knock" where Glyphosate goes on first, followed in a few days by a Paraquat "burn down' before seeding. Now there is talk about genetically modified wheat. So field weeds like pigeongrass, wild mustard, and pigweed have almost disappeared and seem to have taken our good dove hunting with them. Guess I'm just a worry-wart, but it has dampened by urge to hunt those wonderful little gamebirds that used to be seen by the hundreds in the wheat stubble and come to my waterholes every evening during the late summer and fall.