Herbicides are chemical pesticides that are used to manage vegetation. Usually, herbicides are used to reduce the abundance of weedy plants, so as to release desired crop plants from competition. This is the context of most herbicide use in agriculture, forestry, and for lawn management. Sometimes herbicides are not used to protect crops, but to reduce the quantity or height of vegetation, for example along highways and transmission corridors. The reliance on herbicides to achieve these ends has increased greatly in recent decades, and the practice of chemical weed control appears to have become an entrenched component of the modern technological culture of humans, especially in agroecosystems.

The total use of pesticides in the United States in the mid-1980s was 957 million lb per year (434 million kg/year), used over 592,000 square miles (148 million hectares). Herbicides were most widely used, accounting for 68 % of the total quantity [646 million lb per...