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There is actually another option -- especially with respect to herbicides: manual labour. Herbicides don't increase yield. They decrease cost. Wheat is curre

There is actually another option -- especially with respect to herbicides: manual labour. Herbicides don't increase yield. They decrease cost. Wheat is currently $4.35 a bushel. A bushel of wheat is about 60 lbs. So, we're paying just over 7 cents a pound for wheat. Fix the distribution side, not the production side. There's a lot more fat there. And in the mean time, research ways of reducing labour on physical methods of weed control.

baldfat 10y ago
Have you ever been on a wheat farm? I actually have been and even got to help around the farm for fun. My friend had 4.5 squares. That is a square equals 1 square mile. How would we increase labor for weed control? I also lived in Imperial Valley, California. The back breaking work that the migrant workers did was amazing difficult. It would take double or triple the workers to pick through and weed a farm then pick fruits and vegetables. I don't think Kansas nor Manitoba have the population to do that seasonal work.
- pfarnsworth 10y ago
  As someone mentioned above, that's where robots come in.
  - grogenaut 10y ago
    On gantrys? on wheels between the wheat rows? driving over the wheat on that even ground? combine sized? How much placement / spacing do they need?
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      A drone does a fly past mapping the field, then cockroach-sized robots crawl the field locating and cutting weed roots with mechanical jaws. A spike-footed walker then vacuums up the loose weeds and feeds turn to a digester that makes the fuel to run the robots ... simples! It's all good until they get a taste for blood.
- yxhuvud 10y ago
  There are mechanical ways to fight weeds. You'd have to use the tractor and appropriate tools on the field a lot more, and you may end up to have to stop growing just one crop all years but instead cycle between different crops.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    That's how it used to be done way back in the day, but what about the growing pressure to get away from disturbing the soil entirely? I even recall a Minute Earth[1] video, of all places, pressuring us to move towards no-till practices, which relies on herbicides. It seems we're getting some mixed messages. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOefA-bSduM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOefA-bSduM
- mikekchar 10y ago
  I grew up in Winnipeg. :-) Weeding and the like is considerably less "back breaking" than most of the manual labour we have now (like house painting, window washing, road construction, etc). I've harvested rice by hand (cutting with a hand sickle). It's fun. In North America, we build these huge farms because it's the only way to eke out a profit. You need serious capital to get started and you have a single person looking after land from one horizon to the other. This happens because the price of wheat is $4 and change a bushel. And although milk production is often below cost, because of regulatory pressures distribution costs are kept low. Compared to wheat, milk is dramatically more difficult to process and distribute, and yet the markup is many times less. If you look at the difference, you can see where all the money is going. I suggest that you can increase the cost of production of wheat 8-10 times without significantly affecting the final price. This would allow you to have 5 times as many farmers. It would allow them to use smaller, less expensive equipment. It would allow them to reduce their reliance on loans and insurance, further reducing their costs. And, yes, we have more than enough labour as long as we pay people a reasonable wage. In my father's generation, university students all used to work on the farms for their summer jobs. Now? Pizza Pizza. The whole reason we have "summer vacation" is so that students could work on the farms. I live in rural Japan now. I literally live smack dab in the middle of rice fields. Because of the protectionist policies for the last 60 years (installed by the Americans, BTW), farming here is dramatically different. A farm here can be about the size of a residential lot in North America. And... guess what? None of my neighbours use herbicide on their fields. 2 applications of pesticide a year (once in the spring for slugs/snails, once a few weeks before harvesting for grasshoppers -- some of the farmers have been growing an early variety lately and so are able to get the rice off the field before the grasshoppers emerge, so they skip the second application. Some skip the first application by over-planting and then thinning -- by hand!). And for those interested, they do have amazing planters and harvesters. A couple of guys use traditional tractors, but they make an absolute mess of the fields. Most people use these tiny go-cart like devices. You can plant a field in less than an hour and it barely disturbs the soil at all. It's amazing. They have another device that cuts and bundles the rice stalks, but everybody hangs and dries their rice by hand. Then they load it up into pickup trucks and thresh it at a central location. Is my hope that we can fix the distribution system, inject cash back into farms, reduce farm size and increase the number of people working on farms realistic? I seriously doubt it. But I still think that it's important to understand that this is a problem of our own making. This is about money, not about science.
mythrwy 10y ago
Assume the option of substituting manual labor for Roundup was feasible it's quite probable many more people would die of skin cancer from being in the sun or snakebites or hoe accidents or car wrecks on the way out to the field than currently die from Roundup. I love the environment and nature but sometimes we cause bigger problems trying to solve smaller problems. And pay extra to do so.
arthurfm 10y ago
> There is actually another option -- especially with respect to herbicides: manual labour. Wouldn't organic herbicides containing Nonanoic (Pelargonic) acid [1], vinegar [2] or salt [3] also be options? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonanoic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonanoic_acid [2] http://weedicide.co.uk/does-vinegar-kill-weeds/ http://weedicide.co.uk/does-vinegar-kill-weeds/ [3] http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/ http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  If you engineer a crop that is resistant to salt sure.
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  I've personally looked into some of these things, and have read quite a few warnings about both salt and vinegar. Improperly used, they can ruin the soil and render it barren. I'm not sure of the truth of this, but it was enough to make me just use manual labor at home (in other words, my garden was half weeds since I rarely did it). The larger the scale of application, however, the worse they seem to perform. [1] Salt, interestingly enough, still requires some protection so you aren't inahling it nor getting it in your eyes. [2] Just because things are natural or traditional doesn't make them necessarily better than the chemicals we are dealing with now, even with their present downsides. [1]http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2014/06/salt-vinegar-and-glyphosate/ http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2014/06/salt-vinegar-and-glypho... [2] http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/ http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/
  - baldfat 10y ago
    > Just because things are natural or traditional doesn't make them necessarily better than the chemicals we are dealing with now a) cyanide is 100% natural so is snake venom so is that better then you? b) Everything is a chemical. Salt is Sodium chloride (NaCl) has it certainly does destroy the soil. If you don't like someone try dumping some salt into their garden. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/environmental/salt-injury-to-plants.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/environmenta...
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
And if mass media stats are right USA throws away one-third of the food it prepares.
nodnyl 10y ago
In dry parts of the world herbicide use can significantly increase yield. Where I live in Australia a lot of broad-acre farming is "no-till". A field is seeded directly into stubble of the previous crop without mechanical tilling or weeding. Avoiding turning the soil retains moisture and stops top-soil blowing away. We recently had a fire come through near where I live and farmers were remarking they "hadn't seen their soil in years", and were concerned about losing the soil and moisture advantage they had gained over the years. Herbicide use is certainly not just a labor saver, it does open up different ways of farming.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I think the use of herbicide in no-till farming is to kill the cover crop before you plant. There are several other ways to do it. The way they do it in SE asia is that they grow a cover crop that mats together. You can think of it a bit like a lawn, where the roots and runners of the grass forms a sward. With a knife, you can pull up the mat by hand. This achieves the same result without the herbicide. There is also some research for devices that will work. One way is to disc the cover crop. This is reasonably effective, apparently. Another thing I've seen is a device that kind of rakes the cover crop without disturbing it -- a bit like the manual method. Finally, you don't necessarily have to kill the cover crop, depending on what it is (and depending on your crop). You can disc where you intend to plant, or you can even just drill to plan the seeds. The is apparently very effective in dry soil rice production in the southern US, but I haven't really been following it. Finally, one of the techniques that's popular here in Japan is to grow a clover cover crop in the winter, but then cover it with the stalks of last year's rice. Then when you harvest the rice, you move the decomposing stalks back where you intend to plan and resow clover again. This has the advantage of reducing fertilisation use.

baldfat 10y ago

Have you ever been on a wheat farm? I actually have been and even got to help around the farm for fun. My friend had 4.5 squares. That is a square equals 1 square mile. How would we increase labor for weed control? I also lived in Imperial Valley, California. The back breaking work that the migrant workers did was amazing difficult. It would take double or triple the workers to pick through and weed a farm then pick fruits and vegetables. I don't think Kansas nor Manitoba have the population to do that seasonal work.

pfarnsworth 10y ago
As someone mentioned above, that's where robots come in.
- grogenaut 10y ago
  On gantrys? on wheels between the wheat rows? driving over the wheat on that even ground? combine sized? How much placement / spacing do they need?
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    A drone does a fly past mapping the field, then cockroach-sized robots crawl the field locating and cutting weed roots with mechanical jaws. A spike-footed walker then vacuums up the loose weeds and feeds turn to a digester that makes the fuel to run the robots ... simples! It's all good until they get a taste for blood.
yxhuvud 10y ago
There are mechanical ways to fight weeds. You'd have to use the tractor and appropriate tools on the field a lot more, and you may end up to have to stop growing just one crop all years but instead cycle between different crops.
- randomdata 10y ago
  That's how it used to be done way back in the day, but what about the growing pressure to get away from disturbing the soil entirely? I even recall a Minute Earth[1] video, of all places, pressuring us to move towards no-till practices, which relies on herbicides. It seems we're getting some mixed messages. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOefA-bSduM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOefA-bSduM
mikekchar 10y ago
I grew up in Winnipeg. :-) Weeding and the like is considerably less "back breaking" than most of the manual labour we have now (like house painting, window washing, road construction, etc). I've harvested rice by hand (cutting with a hand sickle). It's fun. In North America, we build these huge farms because it's the only way to eke out a profit. You need serious capital to get started and you have a single person looking after land from one horizon to the other. This happens because the price of wheat is $4 and change a bushel. And although milk production is often below cost, because of regulatory pressures distribution costs are kept low. Compared to wheat, milk is dramatically more difficult to process and distribute, and yet the markup is many times less. If you look at the difference, you can see where all the money is going. I suggest that you can increase the cost of production of wheat 8-10 times without significantly affecting the final price. This would allow you to have 5 times as many farmers. It would allow them to use smaller, less expensive equipment. It would allow them to reduce their reliance on loans and insurance, further reducing their costs. And, yes, we have more than enough labour as long as we pay people a reasonable wage. In my father's generation, university students all used to work on the farms for their summer jobs. Now? Pizza Pizza. The whole reason we have "summer vacation" is so that students could work on the farms. I live in rural Japan now. I literally live smack dab in the middle of rice fields. Because of the protectionist policies for the last 60 years (installed by the Americans, BTW), farming here is dramatically different. A farm here can be about the size of a residential lot in North America. And... guess what? None of my neighbours use herbicide on their fields. 2 applications of pesticide a year (once in the spring for slugs/snails, once a few weeks before harvesting for grasshoppers -- some of the farmers have been growing an early variety lately and so are able to get the rice off the field before the grasshoppers emerge, so they skip the second application. Some skip the first application by over-planting and then thinning -- by hand!). And for those interested, they do have amazing planters and harvesters. A couple of guys use traditional tractors, but they make an absolute mess of the fields. Most people use these tiny go-cart like devices. You can plant a field in less than an hour and it barely disturbs the soil at all. It's amazing. They have another device that cuts and bundles the rice stalks, but everybody hangs and dries their rice by hand. Then they load it up into pickup trucks and thresh it at a central location. Is my hope that we can fix the distribution system, inject cash back into farms, reduce farm size and increase the number of people working on farms realistic? I seriously doubt it. But I still think that it's important to understand that this is a problem of our own making. This is about money, not about science.

mythrwy 10y ago

Assume the option of substituting manual labor for Roundup was feasible it's quite probable many more people would die of skin cancer from being in the sun or snakebites or hoe accidents or car wrecks on the way out to the field than currently die from Roundup. I love the environment and nature but sometimes we cause bigger problems trying to solve smaller problems. And pay extra to do so.

arthurfm 10y ago

> There is actually another option -- especially with respect to herbicides: manual labour. Wouldn't organic herbicides containing Nonanoic (Pelargonic) acid [1], vinegar [2] or salt [3] also be options? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonanoic_acid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonanoic_acid [2] http://weedicide.co.uk/does-vinegar-kill-weeds/ http://weedicide.co.uk/does-vinegar-kill-weeds/ [3] http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/ http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/

cmdrfred 10y ago
If you engineer a crop that is resistant to salt sure.
Broken_Hippo 10y ago
I've personally looked into some of these things, and have read quite a few warnings about both salt and vinegar. Improperly used, they can ruin the soil and render it barren. I'm not sure of the truth of this, but it was enough to make me just use manual labor at home (in other words, my garden was half weeds since I rarely did it). The larger the scale of application, however, the worse they seem to perform. [1] Salt, interestingly enough, still requires some protection so you aren't inahling it nor getting it in your eyes. [2] Just because things are natural or traditional doesn't make them necessarily better than the chemicals we are dealing with now, even with their present downsides. [1]http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2014/06/salt-vinegar-and-glyphosate/ http://weedcontrolfreaks.com/2014/06/salt-vinegar-and-glypho... [2] http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/ http://weedicide.co.uk/salt-kill-weeds-herbicide/
- baldfat 10y ago
  > Just because things are natural or traditional doesn't make them necessarily better than the chemicals we are dealing with now a) cyanide is 100% natural so is snake venom so is that better then you? b) Everything is a chemical. Salt is Sodium chloride (NaCl) has it certainly does destroy the soil. If you don't like someone try dumping some salt into their garden. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/environmental/salt-injury-to-plants.htm https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/environmenta...

pbhjpbhj 10y ago

And if mass media stats are right USA throws away one-third of the food it prepares.

nodnyl 10y ago

In dry parts of the world herbicide use can significantly increase yield. Where I live in Australia a lot of broad-acre farming is "no-till". A field is seeded directly into stubble of the previous crop without mechanical tilling or weeding. Avoiding turning the soil retains moisture and stops top-soil blowing away. We recently had a fire come through near where I live and farmers were remarking they "hadn't seen their soil in years", and were concerned about losing the soil and moisture advantage they had gained over the years. Herbicide use is certainly not just a labor saver, it does open up different ways of farming.

mikekchar 10y ago
Forgive me if I'm mistaken, but I think the use of herbicide in no-till farming is to kill the cover crop before you plant. There are several other ways to do it. The way they do it in SE asia is that they grow a cover crop that mats together. You can think of it a bit like a lawn, where the roots and runners of the grass forms a sward. With a knife, you can pull up the mat by hand. This achieves the same result without the herbicide. There is also some research for devices that will work. One way is to disc the cover crop. This is reasonably effective, apparently. Another thing I've seen is a device that kind of rakes the cover crop without disturbing it -- a bit like the manual method. Finally, you don't necessarily have to kill the cover crop, depending on what it is (and depending on your crop). You can disc where you intend to plant, or you can even just drill to plan the seeds. The is apparently very effective in dry soil rice production in the southern US, but I haven't really been following it. Finally, one of the techniques that's popular here in Japan is to grow a clover cover crop in the winter, but then cover it with the stalks of last year's rice. Then when you harvest the rice, you move the decomposing stalks back where you intend to plan and resow clover again. This has the advantage of reducing fertilisation use.