Amide herbicides are highly effective and selective against many kinds of weeds. These herbicides were growing fast in the recent year, has become one of the largest used herbicide in the world. The first amide herbicide, allidochlor, was developed by Monsanto company in 1956, there are 53 amide products commercialized until now. By 2007, amide herbicides have become the second largest category in production, application scopes and applied areas, after organophosphorus herbicides. The largest selling products are acetochlor, butachlor and alachlor, and those products account for about 96％ of total amide herbicides output.

There is no consistent pattern in the mechanism of action of amide herbicides. Some are applied only to the soil and are active through the root system or seeds, while others are applied only to foliage.

The amide herbicides have diverse biological properties. Amides are sometimes grouped with the chloroacetamides. Dimethenamid (Frontier®), first registered in 1993, controls the major grass weeds, broadleafs and yellow nutsedge in corn, soybeans, peanuts, dry beans and sorghum as a selective preemergence herbicide. A resolved form, in which the product was purified to yield the active s isomer, was developed and registered in 1999. This product is named dimethenamid-P (Outlook®).

Propanil (Stampede®) has been used extensively on rice fields as a selective postemergence control for a broad spectrum of weeds. Napropamide is used in the control of grass and broadleaf weeds in vineyards and orchards, and in direct-seeded tomatoes, strawberries, ornamentals, and tobacco.