Atrazine: Cleaning the Air

Old-style agriculture controls weeds through constant plowing. This tearing up of the land releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and other greenhouse gases from organic matter trapped in the soil.

No-till agriculture, enabled by atrazine, keeps that carbon trapped in the ground, storing about 600 pounds of CO₂ in an acre of soil every year.

• Atrazine and other triazine herbicides already help reduce emissions by an estimated 180,000 to 280,000 metric tons of CO₂ per year.
• By reducing plowing, atrazine and its sister triazine herbicides cut agricultural diesel fuel use up to 28 million gallons a year.