[checker]

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

[stevenicr]

I 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]

Wow 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]

2,4-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]

I got them mixed up, thanks for the correction.

[toufka]

Deere 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-tech...

[jelliclesfarm]

Blue 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.

[pockethook]

Tensorfield Agriculture make robots that kill weeds with hot canola oil: https://tensorfield.ag/

[convolvatron]

carbon robotics makes a diesel powered rig that identifies leaf shapes with ML and burns the non-crops with a laser.

[pstuart]

Steam looks promising too: https://www.weedtechnics.com/does-steam-weed-control-actuall...

[41b696ef1113]

That 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]

The 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.

[jhurliman]

Verdant Robotics (https://www.verdantrobotics.com/) does targeted herbicide applications using weed detection and a two-axis turret, with a laser-based variant in the works.

[d0mine]

Bees 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]

>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]

All 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]

Tell 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]

That's not a fault of regenerative farming but rather green washing - reduce chemical inputs but have no plan to implement anything else

[tastyfreeze]

The transition can't be forced. It is a paradigm shift in land management and an entirely different skill set. You can't just tell all farmers they cant use fertilizer anymore without teaching how to do without. That is how you get famine.

Regenerative management is more profitable for farmers so it is going to happen regardless of what governments want. You just can't force it.

[sofixa]

That's extremely misleading. The (still current, power is mainly in the president who is refusing to leave) government banned chemical fertilizers on an extremely short notice, with no planning. That's just incredibly stupid.

Had it been planned, with subsidies, education, multi-year transition, it probably wouldn't have ended in a disaster as it did. But anyways, that's not the only reason for Sri Lanka's demise (lots of stupid money wasting in useless infrastructure, lots of corruption, and Covid). It was just lots of incompetence from very stupid people.

[thatcat]

You have to have an alternative management plan in place, obviously.

[mkoubaa]

Child labor was allowed back then too, which solved both child obesity AND weeds

[unyttigfjelltol]

Robotic weed-zapping lasers.[1] Can't make this stuff up.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/11/02/self-dr...

[sschueller]

I 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.

[smarcellus]

https://carbonrobotics.com/ identifies weeds and kills them with lasers - so no chemicals at all.

[tailspin2019]

I just had to see this in action.

Pretty cool demo here: https://youtu.be/lLaV15vpSJM

[fnordpiglet]

Likely 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.

[jiggywiggy]

There 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]

That’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]

There 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]

Covering with plastic is exactly what happens in strawberry fields every season. There is no other commercially feasible way to grow them.

[elif]

In 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]

Are weeds so bad they warrant this cancer risk?

[Hnrobert42]

The consequence of weeds and the consequence of using roundup accrue to different parties.

[triyambakam]

It'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.

[EamonnMR]

Depends on the weed, really. Nuke Toxicodendron from orbit.

[Pokepokalypse]

Oncosiphon piluliferum as well.

[ciconia]

Weeds 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.

[hammock]

We do have lasers that shoot and kill weeds using computer vision.

[serpix]

Why do you need to kill weeds? Adapt and stop having lawns.

[chasil]

That 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."

[kube-system]

If you put glyphosate on your lawn, you will stop having a lawn. Glyphosate kills grass. Nobody uses it on lawns.

[jader201]

No, but many use it (selectively) on mulch beds. I’m assuming that’s what that means by using it on lawns (vs. farms).

[dboreham]

Can confirm, after spilling some on my lawn while mixing a sprayer batch.

[535188B17C93743]

Lawns 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]

A lot of golf courses use grey water.

[535188B17C93743]

Their 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]

Swimming pools are worse. Let’s ban those first.

[mmcconnell1618]

Most 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]

Indoor or outdoor?

[mmcconnell1618]

Both. Once filled, they don't generally need additional water unless there is a leak, some evaporates or the pool is drained for maintenance.

[wyre]

Please show some sources or math that swimming pools are worse than gold courses

[dahfizz]

What's wrong with swimming pools? Or do you mean just in drought areas?

[checker]

Farm weeds steal nutrients and sunlight from the crops.

[IncRnd]

> 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.

[bergenty]

Lawns are less important. We would have no agricultural output if we didn’t weed.

[Retric]

Farming existed before weed killing. It's extremely useful but output doesn't drop to zero without it.

[Supermancho]

> Farming existed before weed killing.

Weed killing has been integral to farming since it's inception.^1 Chemical herbicides were popularized in the 19th century, which necessarily coincided with the modern population explosion.

^1 https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=1759....

[Retric]

“The earliest evidence of small-scale cultivation of edible grasses is from around 21,000 BC with the Ohalo II people on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.”

“The earliest known weed control technology in 8000 BCE was the plow and hand-weeding (which includes hand-pulling, cutting with a knife, hoes and mattocks).”

That's a very long gap till 8,000 BC.

[Supermancho]

It's implied that @21000BC, they were pulling weeds by hand. Weed killing is part of cultivation. No offense, but you seem completely out of touch with reality, on this topic. I'm not sure you can make a compelling argument without experiencing the simple world of gardening.

https://imgur.com/a/Bly85h8 - these are 2 weeds that have taken over and killed a simple flowering plant from our yard. You can see there are 2 plots that we have spliced from our healthy flowers, where we have been testing weed control methodology, since the neighbors have let these weeds become their lawn. The simple solution seems to be wait until the weed is big enough to have a solid rootball and pull it up manually. This is both the common way for small gardens to be managed AND the only solution for certain invasive species like the Himalayan blackberry which can regrow from stalks or leaves after being mulched and buried - they are resilient to pretty much every pesticide, but they aren't our problem after moving out of WA.

In farmland, you can go over every inch of your acreage and try to spot treat (which won't stop proliferation) or you can uniformly treat, as modern farming currently does.

[whimsicalism]

> Farming existed before weed killing

Farming existed before pesticide.

[Retric]

Farming 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]

I think your definition of farming might be a wee bit broad.

[parineum]

Farming without pesticides existed before we needed to feed 9 billion people.

[goodpoint]

The world is vastly overproducing food and the industry is optimized for profit, not number of people being fed.

Additionally, billions face food uncertainty. Not because the food is not enough.

[chabes]

I believe the conversation is more about agriculture than landscaping

[klyrs]

A 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.