[stinos]

Not really sure what you're hinting at, but yes using robots instead of herbicides would be a step forward. Robots can be programmed to not leak out into surrounding nature.

And actually yes maintaining a variety of weeds/bush around crops has been shown to be beneficial in certain circumstances: more insects attract more predators of all kinds and as such can create an ecosystem which lead to less plagues on the crops. Not gonna work for insanely large monocultures, but tossing away the idea is also not needed.

[hutzlibu]

"Not gonna work for insanely large monocultures"

Those in combination with pesticides and insecticides are the main theat to diversity.

From the point of an ecosystem, those fields are desserts, cutting of different systems, so most species cannot travel and connect, which is something they need to.

[southerntofu]

> Robots can be programmed to not leak out into surrounding nature.

I don't think you can "program" a robot to avoid loosing micro-particles of its shell, or to prevent leaky/self-flammable batteries. Also i'm pretty sure the manufacture of the robot would incur processes that are much more devastating to the environment, eg. extracting and refining materials.

All in all, i agree with your point that chemical fertilizers and mechanized monocultures are slowly turning our soils into a desert, but i don't think "robots" are the future of many things.

Maybe some forms of eco-friendly robots can have a future in an eco-friendly society although i doubt it. But for that you'd need to build robots from widely-available and very recyclable materials, which is the opposite direction that the industry has taken by introducing over a hundred rare earths and metals in most electronics products.

Let's just say i have conflicted feelings about solarpunk: my gut tells me "cool" but my brain tells me "this is how we destroy nature". Although i do note some segments of the solarpunk community are more low-tech and would laugh at the idea of using robots for agriculture.

[stinos]

Heh, didn't know solarpunk was a thing. Anyway: materials etc are definitely a valid concern, but even in a worst case scenario I'm not sure a complete cost-benefit analysis would turn out negative for such robot. I looked around a bit (because robots in agriculture are a thing already) but couldn't find such numbers. But considering one robot could tackle many acres for many years (hopefully), compared with the kilograms of herbicides/pesticides used otherwise, it's just hard to guess which way the scale would tip.