"More than 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed directly over genetically engineered crops such as corn and soybeans, and also over non-genetically engineered crops such as wheat and oats as a desiccant to dry crops out prior to harvest. Many farmers also use it on fields before the growing season, including spinach growers and almond producers. It is considered the most widely used herbicide in history."
Lawns are awful for the environment, and lawn care is a large part of this. Why we still have golf courses in any area that is regularly in drought is beyond me.
Most swimming pools (in ground) are filled once with water and rarely need additional water added. They use much less water than the average sprinkler system. They do require energy (pump and filter systems) and chemicals to keep things balanced but it designed as a closed loop system other than unusual circumstances.
We had a pool growing up, and we actually had to regularly drain the water because it rained much more than it evaporated. We didn't live in a dessert though, so YMMV.
> Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.
If people spray glophysate on their lawns, that is what will happen. Their lawns will die. It's very easy to test, and many people have done this by accident.
Weed killing has been integral to farming since it's inception.^1
Chemical herbicides were popularized in the 19th century, which necessarily coincided with the modern population explosion.
“The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.”
“The earliest known weed control technology in 8000 BCE was the plow and hand-weeding (which includes hand-pulling, cutting with a knife, hoes and mattocks).”
It's implied that @21000BC, they were pulling weeds by hand. Weed killing is part of cultivation. No offense, but you seem completely out of touch with reality, on this topic. I'm not sure you can make a compelling argument without experiencing the simple world of gardening.
https://imgur.com/a/Bly85h8 - these are 2 weeds that have taken over and killed a simple flowering plant from our yard. You can see there are 2 plots that we have spliced from our healthy flowers, where we have been testing weed control methodology, since the neighbors have let these weeds become their lawn. The simple solution seems to be wait until the weed is big enough to have a solid rootball and pull it up manually. This is both the common way for small gardens to be managed AND the only solution for certain invasive species like the Himalayan blackberry which can regrow from stalks or leaves after being mulched and buried - they are resilient to pretty much every pesticide, but they aren't our problem after moving out of WA.
In farmland, you can go over every inch of your acreage and try to spot treat (which won't stop proliferation) or you can uniformly treat, as modern farming currently does.
That’s a logical assumption without direct archaeological support.
Remember we started with wild plants so a significant energy investments beyond throwing seeds may simply have been wasted effort because it’s less needed and has lower rewards. Further removing competitors is a non obvious behavor.
The benefits of a possible harvest increased after destination so the time lag between just tossing seeds and active farming could have been a very long period.
Humanity has gotten very good at it and weedkilling is a big part of it. But, wild plants propagate quite well on their own, spending seeds of things you want more of results in more of that species. Preparing the environment and selecting seeds ca push that much further but the absolute minimum threshold is very low. Toss eaten apples into your yard, and eventually you get apple trees.
What in your mind is the clear cut separation between ants cultivating fungus, people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago, and whatever you think of as farming?
A yard full of Japanese Knotweed is not lawn, but it is a big problem. Sadly, glyphosphate is one of the more effective treatments, but even it won't get rid of the stuff alone.
"More than 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed directly over genetically engineered crops such as corn and soybeans, and also over non-genetically engineered crops such as wheat and oats as a desiccant to dry crops out prior to harvest. Many farmers also use it on fields before the growing season, including spinach growers and almond producers. It is considered the most widely used herbicide in history."