The growing use of chemical herbicides for weed control has become a dominant feature of modern industrial agriculture and a major environmental and health concern in agricultural systems worldwide. This paper seeks to explain how and why glyphosate-based agricultural herbicides have become so entrenched in modern agriculture. It shows that a complex interplay among technological, market, and regulatory developments have encouraged a lock-in of glyphosate linked technologies in agricultural systems. These are: (1) the repurposing of glyphosate for use with genetically modified crops; (2) the rise of the generic glyphosate market, which globalized the chemical’s use and encouraged new agricultural uses; (3) new technologies such as digital agriculture and genome editing that interface with glyphosate use; and (4) growing corporate market power and declining public investment in agricultural research programs that constrained innovation in non-herbicide weed control technologies.

化学除草剂在杂草控制中的使用越来越广泛，已成为现代工业农业的主要特征，并且已成为全球农业系统中的主要环境和健康问题。本文试图解释基于草甘膦的农业除草剂如何以及为什么在现代农业中如此根深蒂固。它表明，技术，市场和法规发展之间的复杂相互作用促使人们将草甘膦相关技术锁定在农业系统中。它们是：（1）将草甘膦重新用于转基因作物；（2）通用草甘膦市场的兴起，使该化学品的使用全球化并鼓励了新的农业用途；（3）与草甘膦使用相联系的数字农业和基因组编辑等新技术；