Table Of ContentGUARDIANS OF ABUNDANCE: AERIAL APPLICATION, AGRICULTURAL
CHEMICALS, AND TOXICITY IN THE POSTWAR PRAIRIE WEST
by
DAVID DOUGLAS VAIL
B.A., SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY, 2004
M.A., UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, 2006
AN ABSTRACT OF A DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History
College of Arts and Sciences
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Manhattan, Kansas
2012
Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the environmental, agricultural, and technological
history of the modern United States by examining pesticide use and the debates
surrounding them in the Great Plains from the 1940s to the 1980s. Specifically, it
addresses the relationships among aerial sprayers, farmers, agriculturalists, and grassroots
concepts of toxicity that emerged from mid-century technological and environmental
changes. It argues that pesticides as well as a variety of weeds and insects actively
transformed the tools, attitudes, and regulatory policies of their users.
Historians of agricultural chemical use in America have focused on the political
debates over DDT, the social activism against pesticides that Rachel Carson inspired with
her best-selling book Silent Spring (1962), the growth in federal regulatory policy in the
1970s, and the contentious reactions by the chemical and agricultural industries. This
study offers a new, ground-level history of pesticides by showing how aerial sprayers,
farmers, and agriculturalists developed custom chemical applications and conceptualized
toxicity as each related to the technological and environmental changes in the region.
Drawing on multiple sources, including agricultural experiment station reports, scientific
studies, government documents, farm journals, landowner and aerial spray pilot
correspondence, and oral histories, this study explores how local producers changed with
their chemicals, spray planes, and pests to develop an environmental ethos that
understood toxicity as a synthetic and natural danger. Although opposition to pesticides
became central to modern environmentalism, debates around pesticides‘ effectiveness
and dangers did not come only from activists or government regulators. Beginning just
after World War II, landowners and spray pilots in the fields and rural airstrips of the
Great Plains took the hazards of agricultural chemicals seriously, critiquing how and why
pesticides were used for decades after.
By viewing chemicals, spray planes, and pests, as well as landowners, pilots, and
agriculturalists as equal forces in the regional transformation of farming landscapes, this
dissertation highlights a new history of pesticides, agriculture, and the environment.
Farmers and custom applicators did not simply follow the economic goals of
agribusiness. Nor did they dismiss the dangers of pesticides. Rather, they constructed
their own standards of injury and environmental risk that stressed accuracy, regulation,
and a reasonable certainty of safety—a result of the equally transformational influences
of chemicals, pests, and the region. This study finally offers new insights into the creation
of national chemical policy and the regulatory debates over pesticides during the 1960s
and 1970s.
GUARDIANS OF ABUNDANCE: AERIAL APPLICATION, AGRICULTURAL
CHEMICALS, AND TOXICITY IN THE POSTWAR PRAIRIE WEST
by
DAVID DOUGLAS VAIL
B.A., SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY, 2004
M.A., UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY, 2006
A DISSERTATION
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History
College of Arts and Sciences
KANSAS STATE UNIVERSITY
Manhattan, Kansas
2012
Approved by:
Major Professor
Dr. James E. Sherow
Copyright
© David Douglas Vail 2012
All Rights Reserved
Abstract
This dissertation contributes to the environmental, agricultural, and technological
history of the modern United States by examining pesticide use and the debates
surrounding them in the Great Plains from the 1940s to the 1980s. Specifically, it
addresses the relationships among aerial sprayers, farmers, agriculturalists, and grassroots
concepts of toxicity that emerged from mid-century technological and environmental
changes. It argues that pesticides as well as a variety of weeds and insects actively
transformed the tools, attitudes, and regulatory policies of their users.
Historians of agricultural chemical use in America have focused on the political
debates over DDT, the social activism against pesticides that Rachel Carson inspired with
her best-selling book Silent Spring (1962), the growth in federal regulatory policy in the
1970s, and the contentious reactions by the chemical and agricultural industries. This
study offers a new, ground-level history of pesticides by showing how aerial sprayers,
farmers, and agriculturalists developed custom chemical applications and conceptualized
toxicity as each related to the technological and environmental changes in the region.
Drawing on multiple sources, including agricultural experiment station reports, scientific
studies, government documents, farm journals, landowner and aerial spray pilot
correspondence, and oral histories, this study explores how local producers changed with
their chemicals, spray planes, and pests to develop an environmental ethos that
understood toxicity as a synthetic and natural danger. Although opposition to pesticides
became central to modern environmentalism, debates around pesticides‘ effectiveness
and dangers did not come only from activists or government regulators. Beginning just
after World War II, landowners and spray pilots in the fields and rural airstrips of the
Great Plains took the hazards of agricultural chemicals seriously, critiquing how and why
pesticides were used for decades after.
By viewing chemicals, spray planes, and pests, as well as landowners, pilots, and
agriculturalists as equal forces in the regional transformation of farming landscapes, this
dissertation highlights a new history of pesticides, agriculture, and the environment.
Farmers and custom applicators did not simply follow the economic goals of
agribusiness. Nor did they dismiss the dangers of pesticides. Rather, they constructed
their own standards of injury and environmental risk that stressed accuracy, regulation,
and a reasonable certainty of safety—a result of the equally transformational influences
of chemicals, pests, and the region. This study finally offers new insights into the creation
of national chemical policy and the regulatory debates over pesticides during the 1960s
and 1970s.
Table of Contents
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix
List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... xi
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... xii
Dedication ....................................................................................................................... xvii
Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1
Notes ............................................................................................................9
Chapter 1. The Making of a Chemical-Agricultural Landscape .................................11
Notes ..........................................................................................................35
Chapter 2. Learning from the Noxious Ones ...............................................................39
Notes ..........................................................................................................74
Chapter 3. Spraying the Airplane Way .......................................................................79
Notes ........................................................................................................115
Chapter 4. Marketing Toxicity and Standardizing Risk ............................................119
Notes ........................................................................................................157
Chapter 5. Warnings, Regulations, and the Politics of Poison ..................................163
Notes ........................................................................................................210
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................216
Notes ........................................................................................................219
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................220
viii
List of Figures
Figure 1: Horse Drawn Sprayer for Crops .........................................................................24
Figure 2: Various Mechanical Versions of Hopperdozzer ................................................25
Figure 3: Kansas Weed Scientists Studying a Musk Thistle Invasion, ca. 1940s .............53
Figure 4: Ted Yost with J.C. Mohler, ca. 1949..................................................................62
Figure 5: Nebraska‘s Weed Expert, Noel S. Hanson, 1947 ...............................................62
Figure 6: Nebraska‘s Noxious Weed ―Most Wanted List‖ ................................................72
Figure 7: Kansas Ag Pilot Roy Mahon consulting with a Weed Scientist ........................72
Figure 8: Curtiss Jenny, ca. 1920s .....................................................................................90
Figure 9: Dusting Catalpa Grove for Sphinx Caterpillar Infestation in Ohio ....................90
Figure 10: ―The Farmer Takes A Plane,‖ New York Times, 1948 .....................................93
Figure 11: ―How to Spray the Aircraft Way: A Guide for Farmers and Spray-Plane
Pilots,‖ Farmer’s Bulletin No. 2062, 1954 .....................................................98
Figure 12: ―How to Spray the Aircraft Way: A Guide for Farmers and Spray-Plane
Pilots,‖ Farmer’s Bulletin No. 2062, 1954 ...................................................101
Figure 13: ―How To Spray the Aircraft Way: A Guide for Farmers and Spray-Plane
Pilots,‖ Farmer’s Bulletin No. 2062, 1954 ...................................................102
Figure 14: ―How To Spray the Aircraft Way: A Guide for Farmers and Spray-Plane
Pilots,‖ Farmer’s Bulletin No. 2062, 1954 ...................................................103
Figure 15: P-T Air Service from the Topeka Daily Capital, ca.1949 ..............................109
Figure 16: Roy Mahon Preparing to Treat Western Kansas Wheat, ca. 1949 .................113
Figure 17: ―Health-Comfort-Profit‖ ................................................................................143
Figure 18: Test flight photographs of the Ag-1 ...............................................................181
Figure 19: Photograph for State Agents of Illegal Mixing ..............................................192
Figure 20: Photograph of Mislabeling .............................................................................192
ix
Figure 21: Cessna Ag Wagon with Electronic Dispenser System ...................................206
Figure 22: Inside a Cessna Ag Wagon cockpit. ...............................................................206
Figure 23: An Example of a Modern Spray Catchment System ......................................207
Figure 24: 2009 University Fly-In as part of Operation S.A.F.E ....................................208
x
Description:Shelly Reves was a light in the storm of forms, paychecks, and Others including aviator Brent Connor from Medford, Oregon and . chemicals meant landowners had to work with poisons and not just apply them—now In short, the boundaries between environment, weed, insect, Ag plane, farmer,.
