פירוש על שקלים 1:2

היו עוקרים ומשליכים לפניהם – in front of the owners of the fields in order that they will be embarrassed but these owners of the fields were happy since they weeded their fields for them, and furthermore, they would place them before their animals, they (i.e., the Rabbis) established that they would throw them on the roads, and still the owners of the fields were happy that they (i.e., the inspectors) would weed for them.

Introduction At the end of yesterday’s mishnah we learned that on the fifteenth of Adar the court would send out agents to uproot kilayim, shoots that have grown from mixed seeds. In today’s mishnah we learn how this was done.

התקינו שיהו מפקירין כל השדה – the confiscation by the court (disposing of private property by the process of law) is valid (see Talmud Gittin 36b).

Rabbi Judah said: at first they used to uproot [the kilayim], and throw them down before them. [But] when transgressors increased in number, they used to uproot them and throw them on the roads. [Finally], they decreed that they should make the whole field ownerless. At first the court would merely uproot the kilayim plants to prevent them from continuing to grow. They didn’t bother throwing them away, but would just uproot them and leave them in their place. The problem with this was that people would use the plants that the court’s agents had uprooted. If they were not fit for human consumption they would feed them to their animals. This is prohibited because it is prohibited to derive any benefit from kilayim. To remedy this, they began to throw the plants out onto the roads where anyone could take them. However, even this was not sufficient. People did not seem to care that the court’s agents would come around and uproot their plants. Indeed, they may have even thanked the court for doing their weeding for them! Therefore the court had to decree that if they found kilayim in someone’s field, they would declare the entire field ownerless. Basically this is penalizing the person by making him lose his field. This was a far more effective measure; since people knew they might lose their field they were far more cautious about allowing kilayim to grow.