doesn't a herbicide kill soil microbial life?

@@TropicBreezeRealty if it's used excessively. herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides are all poison, it just that you use just enough (in the least impactful way)to get your target species under control. I farm beyond the pay-to-play that is USDA organic, and I still contend that where conventional ag went wrong was when we started using broad application spraying to apply everything (over applies it, and gets too much on the soil). Synthetic inputs still are a viable tool, they are a very specialized tool that should be used incredibly judiciously to achieve a long lasting solution (if there is no other good option). Take Johnson Grass, for example; when my dad was young back in the late 50's and early 60's, tillage was how you controlled weeds. problem is, Johnson Grass is incredibly invasive and even a small piece of rhizome can sprout a new plant. they could not control it with tillage, in fact, tillage was spreading it to the point that farms were struggling to pay bills and going under due to it out competing their crops (I think of it as the Kudzu of the north). Then one day, Monsanto comes out and says that if you wipe this chemical on the weeds, it will kill it, and due to it not being applied to the soil, it will quickly break down in sunlight. Farmers started using it, and that saved a lot of farms.

@@wildrangeringreen same for me with Japanese STILTGRASS.