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Polyculture has two very significant advantages. - Because you're pulling multiple crops off a field instead of one, the value of those crops is significantly

Polyculture has two very significant advantages. - Because you're pulling multiple crops off a field instead of one, the value of those crops is significantly higher. - The crop is much more resilient. The different crops will have different tolerances to drought, disease, insects, wind and other disasters that commonly affect farming. When farmland was cheap you could increase your profits per employee by buying more land and bigger machinery. But these days farmland is expensive and farmers are concentrating more on increasing yields per acre. In my area farmers spend > 10x as much per acre on inputs like fertilizers and pesticides than they used to in the 90's. Polyculture will be hard and expensive, but if it lets you double profit per acre, farmers will do it.

bgnn 1y ago
I would love that to happen. It will happen if it's economically more competitive.
analog31 1y ago
The two crops are corn and soybeans. Everything else is decimal dust. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to mix them within a plot, as opposed to mixing them by crop rotation. Also, all of the crops have to be herbicide resistant to coexist with corn and beans. Now, for things like veggies, sure.
- bryanlarsen 1y ago
  It makes a lot of sense to mix corns and beans. Corn is usually more profitable than soybeans, but they are rotated for soil health reasons. If you planted both together you wouldn't have to rotate. Corn & beans are 2 of the "three sisters", the traditional native American agriculture technique.
  - analog31 1y ago
    Will the beans get any sun?
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      You'd want to grow a shade tolerant bean, like cornfield beans. 80% of soybeans are fed to animals; the pigs won't care what type of bean they get fed.
      - analog31 1y ago
        Indeed, the only variable is yield.
        bryanlarsen 1y ago
        You're not going to get a full yield of either the corn or the beans, but the corn harvest should be pretty close to a full yield and then the beans are pure bonus.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
    How would you harvest them separately? Or is the plan to harvest them together and let the combine sort it out?
    - bryanlarsen 1y ago
      They're highly unlikely to be ripe at the same time. The idea is to basically do it the same way the native Americans did, except using robots instead of humans. Which is how gardeners do it today. You regularly walk the field, removing the ripe ears and pods, leaving behind the stalks and unripe ears/pods to check again in a day or two. Then after all the ripe ears/pods are gone you can mulch the stalks.
      - analog31 1y ago
        As I understand it right now, the corn & beans are ready to harvest when the water content falls below a certain threshold, to minimize the cost of drying it. In my region, it's a betting game against the weather. If the right conditions emerge, everybody's trying to harvest everything at once. During this time there's also a crush for the available harvesters, semi trucks, and elevator capacity. All of which rides the ups and downs of prices. The robots could be programmed to manage this process too. Of course we'll need less of these crops, if we all become allergic to beef because of that tick. ;-)
      - HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
        Sounds energy intensive == expensive.
- like_any_other 1y ago
  > Also, all of the crops have to be herbicide resistant to coexist with corn and beans. For now. There's already significant R&D on robotic versions of herbicide.
- whiplash451 1y ago
  > The two crops are corn and soybeans. Well, that's mostly because this was convenient for mass monoculture. We've killed crop diversity as a byproduct, but polyculture could open up opportunities to fix that.
  - analog31 1y ago
    The apex monocultures are beef, pork, and chicken.
NalNezumi 1y ago
I've toyed with this idea (nothing concrete) while working in robotics in Japan. During covid i traveled by bus through Shizuoka prefecture, through the mountains. The prefecture is known for its Wasabi plantation and indeed you could see many small plantations of it. It also grows in the wild in the mountains, usually where mineral rich water exist, along the water. Most of Japan is covered in inhospitable mountains (dense jungle like forest), and is therefore not even used for farming. Some patches of Wasabi plants looked so small, and very vertical (following along a natural stream) it must be gruesome work for a single farmer to go up and down that track. Set up like that could be an ideal application for robot farming. Conventional scale farming machines probably can't operate in this vertical constraints, filled with water, trees, rock and mud but small and nimble quadruped style robots could maybe! Fresh wasabi can go for like 250$/kg, seems like a case for small-scale, mountain farming (otherwise tedious for human, too unorganized environment for farming machine) with agile robots could pay off especially since the landscape can't otherwise be utilized (without flattening it). (the technology is not there yet I think. One can dream) Looks something like this: https://www.arabnews.jp/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/1608005820746711600-1024x683.jpg https://www.arabnews.jp/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/1... More at https://www.shizuoka-wasabi.jp/en/about/ https://www.shizuoka-wasabi.jp/en/about/

bgnn 1y ago

I would love that to happen. It will happen if it's economically more competitive.

analog31 1y ago

The two crops are corn and soybeans. Everything else is decimal dust. I'm not sure how much sense it makes to mix them within a plot, as opposed to mixing them by crop rotation. Also, all of the crops have to be herbicide resistant to coexist with corn and beans. Now, for things like veggies, sure.

bryanlarsen 1y ago
It makes a lot of sense to mix corns and beans. Corn is usually more profitable than soybeans, but they are rotated for soil health reasons. If you planted both together you wouldn't have to rotate. Corn & beans are 2 of the "three sisters", the traditional native American agriculture technique.
- analog31 1y ago
  Will the beans get any sun?
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    You'd want to grow a shade tolerant bean, like cornfield beans. 80% of soybeans are fed to animals; the pigs won't care what type of bean they get fed.
    - analog31 1y ago
      Indeed, the only variable is yield.
      - bryanlarsen 1y ago
        You're not going to get a full yield of either the corn or the beans, but the corn harvest should be pretty close to a full yield and then the beans are pure bonus.
- HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
  How would you harvest them separately? Or is the plan to harvest them together and let the combine sort it out?
  - bryanlarsen 1y ago
    They're highly unlikely to be ripe at the same time. The idea is to basically do it the same way the native Americans did, except using robots instead of humans. Which is how gardeners do it today. You regularly walk the field, removing the ripe ears and pods, leaving behind the stalks and unripe ears/pods to check again in a day or two. Then after all the ripe ears/pods are gone you can mulch the stalks.
    - analog31 1y ago
      As I understand it right now, the corn & beans are ready to harvest when the water content falls below a certain threshold, to minimize the cost of drying it. In my region, it's a betting game against the weather. If the right conditions emerge, everybody's trying to harvest everything at once. During this time there's also a crush for the available harvesters, semi trucks, and elevator capacity. All of which rides the ups and downs of prices. The robots could be programmed to manage this process too. Of course we'll need less of these crops, if we all become allergic to beef because of that tick. ;-)
    - HeyLaughingBoy 1y ago
      Sounds energy intensive == expensive.
like_any_other 1y ago
> Also, all of the crops have to be herbicide resistant to coexist with corn and beans. For now. There's already significant R&D on robotic versions of herbicide.
whiplash451 1y ago
> The two crops are corn and soybeans. Well, that's mostly because this was convenient for mass monoculture. We've killed crop diversity as a byproduct, but polyculture could open up opportunities to fix that.
- analog31 1y ago
  The apex monocultures are beef, pork, and chicken.

NalNezumi 1y ago

I've toyed with this idea (nothing concrete) while working in robotics in Japan. During covid i traveled by bus through Shizuoka prefecture, through the mountains. The prefecture is known for its Wasabi plantation and indeed you could see many small plantations of it. It also grows in the wild in the mountains, usually where mineral rich water exist, along the water. Most of Japan is covered in inhospitable mountains (dense jungle like forest), and is therefore not even used for farming. Some patches of Wasabi plants looked so small, and very vertical (following along a natural stream) it must be gruesome work for a single farmer to go up and down that track. Set up like that could be an ideal application for robot farming. Conventional scale farming machines probably can't operate in this vertical constraints, filled with water, trees, rock and mud but small and nimble quadruped style robots could maybe! Fresh wasabi can go for like 250$/kg, seems like a case for small-scale, mountain farming (otherwise tedious for human, too unorganized environment for farming machine) with agile robots could pay off especially since the landscape can't otherwise be utilized (without flattening it). (the technology is not there yet I think. One can dream) Looks something like this: https://www.arabnews.jp/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/12/1608005820746711600-1024x683.jpg https://www.arabnews.jp/en/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/1... More at https://www.shizuoka-wasabi.jp/en/about/ https://www.shizuoka-wasabi.jp/en/about/