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How far off are we from having drones that mechanically remove weeds at a reasonable cost? It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our
by checker 4y ago
How far off are we from having drones that mechanically remove weeds at a reasonable cost? It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our food. We can build loyal wingman drones to kill enemy aircraft but we can't kill weeds??
Edit: I'm talking about farming, not lawns. RTFA
- ciconia 4y agoWeeds are largely a symptom of monoculture, an algricultural practice that's ecologically destructive. Besides, there are diverse solutions to controlling weeds: mulching, association planting, green cover... > It's ridiculous that we put up with spraying sketchy chemicals on our food. Yes, but it's also ridiculous to treat the symptom instead of the disease.
- serpix 4y agoWhy do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.
- 535188B17C93743 4y agoLawns are awful for the environment, and lawn care is a large part of this. Why we still have golf courses in any area that is regularly in drought is beyond me.
- parineum 4y agoA lot of golf courses use grey water.
- 535188B17C93743 4y agoTheir water usage is only part of the problem. Extensive over-use of fertilizers which then end up in water ways is just as bad, if not worse.
- nemo44x 4y agoSwimming pools are worse. Let’s ban those first.
- dahfizz 4y agoWhat's wrong with swimming pools? Or do you mean just in drought areas?
- mmcconnell1618 4y agoMost swimming pools (in ground) are filled once with water and rarely need additional water added. They use much less water than the average sprinkler system. They do require energy (pump and filter systems) and chemicals to keep things balanced but it designed as a closed loop system other than unusual circumstances.
- 8note 4y agoIndoor or outdoor?
- mmcconnell1618 4y agoBoth. Once filled, they don't generally need additional water unless there is a leak, some evaporates or the pool is drained for maintenance.
- dahfizz 4y agoWe had a pool growing up, and we actually had to regularly drain the water because it rained much more than it evaporated. We didn't live in a dessert though, so YMMV.
- wyre 4y agoPlease show some sources or math that swimming pools are worse than gold courses
- checker 4y agoFarm weeds steal nutrients and sunlight from the crops.
- chabes 4y agoI believe the conversation is more about agriculture than landscaping
- bergenty 4y agoLawns are less important. We would have no agricultural output if we didn’t weed.
- Retric 4y agoFarming existed before weed killing. It's extremely useful but output doesn't drop to zero without it.
- whimsicalism 4y ago> Farming existed before weed killing Farming existed before pesticide.
- Retric 4y agoFarming existed before people. Humanity has gotten very good at it and weedkilling is a big part of it. But, wild plants propagate quite well on their own, spending seeds of things you want more of results in more of that species. Preparing the environment and selecting seeds ca push that much further but the absolute minimum threshold is very low. Toss eaten apples into your yard, and eventually you get apple trees.
- whimsicalism 4y agoI think your definition of farming might be a wee bit broad.
- Retric 4y agoWhat in your mind is the clear cut separation between ants cultivating fungus, people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago, and whatever you think of as farming?
- whimsicalism 4y agoOkay I was wondering if you were going to bring ants up because I think that is a good point. > people tossing specific seeds on the ground 20,000 years ago This seems irrelevant to whether farming occurred before people. I don't think the line is very clear cut at all, but it does involve intentional intervention by a species not the plant.
- chasil 4y agoThat is not the major use of glyphosate. "More than 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed directly over genetically engineered crops such as corn and soybeans, and also over non-genetically engineered crops such as wheat and oats as a desiccant to dry crops out prior to harvest. Many farmers also use it on fields before the growing season, including spinach growers and almond producers. It is considered the most widely used herbicide in history."
- klyrs 4y agoA yard full of Japanese Knotweed is not lawn, but it is a big problem. Sadly, glyphosphate is one of the more effective treatments, but even it won't get rid of the stuff alone.
- kube-system 4y agoIf you put glyphosate on your lawn, you will stop having a lawn. Glyphosate kills grass. Nobody uses it on lawns.
- IncRnd 4y ago> Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns. If people spray glophysate on their lawns, that is what will happen. Their lawns will die. It's very easy to test, and many people have done this by accident.
- toufka 4y agoDeere bought the startup Blue River for $300M. Drones to identify and specifically spray just them. Not quite mechanical removal, but closer than spraying the whole field: https://medium.com/@dcvc/john-deere-acquires-blue-river-technology-for-305-million-bringing-full-stack-ai-to-agriculture-7ca8c25a5fe1 https://medium.com/@dcvc/john-deere-acquires-blue-river-tech...
- jelliclesfarm 4y agoBlue River doesn’t use drones. There were so many layers to that medium post. It’s like an incestuous orgy in a glyphosate teacup. First..There once was a company called Climate corp..that sold a neat little box called Fieldview that was slapped under a tractor. When the farmer harvested corn, Fieldview harvested data. All kinds of data. Useless data that the farmer didn’t need and know that he had. Climate was amassing crap ton of data from thousands of acres of American fields. This caught the eye of John Deere. They wanted Climate. But what Climate had was nothing short of a treasure chest. Monsanto wanted that too. At the end, Monsanto got the prize. They purchased Climate. Climate under Monsanto went on to create Precision Planting and they were going to sell that arm to John Deere. But due to anti trust concerns, the courts put several road blocks. As if Monsanto and John Deere already don’t control American Ag.. So finally Bayer purchased Monsanto but not all parts of it. Climate was spun off and Monsanto’s investment arm Monsanto Growth Ventures was shut down and the portfolio went on to populate DCVC. Blue River Tech was a small company that came up with a ‘See and Spray’ tech to identify weeds in the lettuce fields of California with AI and sprayed it with an organic fertilizer high N concentration that burnt emerging thread stage weeds. DCVC was investor in Blue River. John Deere bought out Blue River because they gave up on buying Climate from Monsanto for $305 million. Blue River tech that was using its See and Spray AI in organic lettuce fields now uses the tech for GM cotton etc and is part of JD’s Agtech offerings as AI full stack. And yes, they use glyphosate. I will tell the fairytale of how Monsanto used to sell seeds, fertilizer, herbicides. Sterile GMO seeds that can only grow with Monsanto inputs and need their magic sauce with glyphosate. But for now..Blue River doesn’t use drones.
- fnordpiglet 4y agoLikely very far off. Mechanical removal would be very hard to pull off, especially given how reliably and quickly it’ll have to work for a large farm.
- pockethook 4y agoTensorfield Agriculture make robots that kill weeds with hot canola oil: https://tensorfield.ag/ https://tensorfield.ag/
- 41b696ef1113 4y agoThat is amazing. I do not know anything about plants - is this approach generically applicable for all crops or are there limitations on what kinds of weeds are likely to grow in a field? For example: weeds in wheat fields are too visually similar/closely spaced/different life cycle than the cash crop for this to work?
- jxramos 4y agoThe further you let them grow the more differentiated they become. So time could be leaned on as a predictor. But even at the very young cotlydon phase you can differentiate between certain species, even at the level of seeds. It depends how closely related things are of course but with time every plant identifies itself pretty much.
- convolvatron 4y agocarbon robotics makes a diesel powered rig that identifies leaf shapes with ML and burns the non-crops with a laser.
- pstuart 4y agoSteam looks promising too: https://www.weedtechnics.com/does-steam-weed-control-actually-work/ https://www.weedtechnics.com/does-steam-weed-control-actuall...
- d0mine 4y agoBees won't survive until it (if ever) happens. We are likely too. It is like relying on aliens to bring peace on Earth. Outlawing glyphosate would fix it (people did agriculture before 1974 (without drones)). Though it is almost as unlikely as aliens.
- i_am_jl 4y ago>people did agriculture before 1974 (without drones) We've added about 3.8 billion people to the planet since then. I'm not saying that we can't feed the world without glyphosate, but "Let's just do it like we did in '74!" doesn't account for the fact that we need a lot more food today.
- tastyfreeze 4y agoAll the chemical inputs to farms make them unprofitable. Each year takes more input to make the farm work. We broke the ecosystem, nitrogen cycle and phosphate cycle by tilling, monocropping, and chemical input. The way we farm kills the soil. We can support the population without chemical inputs if we manage the land differently. It takes about 3 years to transition to a regenerative management style. That is how long it takes to bring the soil back to life. After the transition period inputs are minimal and yields are similar to chemical farming.
- kurthr 4y agoTell that to Sri Lanka. There is massive unrest, because people will starve. The farmers were not the ones saying, "don't use chemical fertilizer", the ex-government was.
- triyambakam 4y agoThat's not a fault of regenerative farming but rather green washing - reduce chemical inputs but have no plan to implement anything else
- thatcat 4y ago
- jhurliman 4y agoVerdant Robotics (https://www.verdantrobotics.com/ https://www.verdantrobotics.com/) does targeted herbicide applications using weed detection and a two-axis turret, with a laser-based variant in the works.
- smarcellus 4y agohttps://carbonrobotics.com/ https://carbonrobotics.com/ identifies weeds and kills them with lasers - so no chemicals at all.
- tailspin2019 4y agoI just had to see this in action. Pretty cool demo here: https://youtu.be/lLaV15vpSJM https://youtu.be/lLaV15vpSJM
- unyttigfjelltol 4y agoRobotic weed-zapping lasers.[1] Can't make this stuff up. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-driving-farm-robot-uses-lasers-to-kill-100000-weeds-an-hour-saving-land-and-farmers-from-toxic-herbicides/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-dr...
- sschueller 4y agoI thought weed and bugs are the least of the problems. It's more disease and the fact that you are farming the same monoculture extremely dense on the same plot over and over again.
- jiggywiggy 4y agoThere are many ways that don't require that much more effort. For instance plastic covering the field will clean up a field. But that's a tiny bit more work then just spraying and poisoning everything. Of course the GMO crops that are bred to be glysophate resistant are even more convenient
- voakbasda 4y agoThat’s not a tiny amount of work. We are talking about hundreds and thousands of acres. That is not feasible for covering with plastic.
- jiggywiggy 4y agoThere is no healthy way to long-term grow thousands and thousands of acres with a monocrop. You have to chemically spray everything to death and chemically try to uplift the soil, but it's just not sustainable over a few decades. And completely unhealthy both for the farmers and consumers. The bottom line is only better off if you ignore all the societal and long-term costs.
- hammock 4y agoCovering with plastic is exactly what happens in strawberry fields every season. There is no other commercially feasible way to grow them.
- elif 4y agoIn Japan I was surprised to see that for large fruit like apples etc. they actually put a bag over the fruit when it is young, so the fruit stays protected from all manner of pests for its entire lifetime, up until retail purchase in cases.
- moneywoes 4y agoAre weeds so bad they warrant this cancer risk?
- EamonnMR 4y agoDepends on the weed, really. Nuke Toxicodendron from orbit.
- Pokepokalypse 4y agoOncosiphon piluliferum as well.
- triyambakam 4y agoIt's about profits, so for the greedy it's definitely worth the cancer risk. Weeds take resources from the crop yield. Conventional farming is not designed to handle weeds, or the way they do handle them is nearly exclusively through spraying. In contrast more whole system approaches like permaculture employ ways of purposefully planting good weeds, as one simple example, and a variety of other integrated approaches.
- Hnrobert42 4y agoThe consequence of weeds and the consequence of using roundup accrue to different parties.
- stevenicr 4y agoI was shocked to learn that many farms are using the chemical to spray the entire field in order to not just kill weeds, but also to increase bud yield / weight. Similar to the rohip whatever chemical is given to some beef when it close to slaughter to magically make it gain weight. Apparently when you spray this stuff on the plants a couple days before harvest, they know they are being killed / dieing - so they put all their energy in to the buds to give the seeds / fruits a better chance at living - so the sell weight is higher. So it's not just being used to kill weeds, it's actually being used to cover the food a short time before it's cut and sold.
- checker 4y agoWow that's incredibly depressing. Yeah glyphosate kills weeds by inducing unsustainable growth and forcing the plant to overextend itself and die as a result. So it makes sense that if you apply it to a crop you're going to harvest anyway you'll get a bit more yield out of it. I guess tech+ban is the only way to go, unless we're okay forcing ourselves to play the cancer lottery with worse odds.
- maxerickson 4y ago2,4-D is the widely used growth accelerator. Glyphosate blocks the action of an enzyme that is necessary for plants to grow. Crops are frequently sprayed with desiccants to speed harvest once they are mature. Glyphosate is used that way.
- checker 4y agoI got them mixed up, thanks for the correction.
- hammock 4y agoWe do have lasers that shoot and kill weeds using computer vision.