The War Against Weeds: How 2,4-D Reshaped the Global Environment

This award supports research on the oldest and most widely used synthetic herbicide, 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D). The herbicide has been used in a variety of contexts including agriculture, for turfgrass and conservation management, and as a weapon of war. This project analyzes the role of research teams, chemical companies, and regulatory agencies in the development and global dissemination of 2,4-D.

It also investigates how 2,4-D has selected for grass species across ecosystem types. Results will be shared as a book manuscript and through conference presentations, presentations to policymakers, and op-eds and essays for a public audience, and will contribute to policy debates about the costs and consequences of herbicides and other biocides.

The goal of this project is to understand how 2,4-D, despite being a material that often treated as immaterial, invisible and negligible, has become a driver of global ecological change. This project will use archival methods to follow 2,4-D as it travelled through time, space, and social institutions. Its objects of analysis are archival documents as well also historical and contemporary lawns, sugar cane plantations, managed native prairies, and other forests and fields fundamentally shaped by 2,4-D and its residues.

This project will advance scholarship at the intersection of science and technology studies and environmental history on new materialism, chemical residues, and multispecies justice. It will also contribute to landscape ecology, offering tools for identifying landscapes shaped by 2,4-D and other synthetic biocides. And it will advance social scientific research that identifies synthetic chemicals as drivers of the global biodiversity crisis.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.