Herbicides have a long history of negative consequences. Glyphosate and paraquat, among other pollutants, are extremely harmful to human health and the environment. These pollutants impair soil quality and destroy beneficial organisms such as pollinators. Furthermore, the widespread use of herbicides has resulted in weed resistance, making chemical management less effective.
Kenny Lee, co-founder and CEO of Aigen Robotics, is personally committed to reducing pesticide use. Lee, a glyphosate-related non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, has collected $19 million for his startup to produce solar-powered weeding robots. “We’re on a personal mission,” Lee says, emphasizing their dedication to sustainable agriculture.
This, like most technical innovations in farming, has the problem that most farms are extremely cash/investment starved.
Basically anything that primarily benefits small farms and the environment doesn’t give sufficient return of investment for farmers to be able to borrow money for it, and they themselves have all their assets already fixed in expensive other farm equipment.
So the only ones that can benefit from this are the huge industrial farms with big corporate owners, and their (only) interest is to use it to cut labour costs.
It’s like any technology we can dream of would still not solve the problem of the current system. It’s so disheartening seeing apparent solutions gatekept by capital interests
Doesn’t hydroponic farming already solve the weed problem without herbicides?
I could be wrong, but I don’t think you can grow all plants in hydroponics. For example, anything that grows on trees(large root systems) as well as grain crops (where you need a lot of plants together, rather in individual pods like in most hydroponics).
The only alternative I can think of is a greenhouse system. Like what indoor botanical gardens use for trees, but instead designed for farming. That would be expensive(more than farmers could afford), but it would also weather-protect crops.
But you are right about hydroponics or aquaponics for a lot of produce, though!
Weeds aren’t a problem, but typically the fertilizers for hydro are petroleum based, and therefore not sustainable.
Isn’t this the case for most of the ammonia based fertilizer used in all types of farming?
Yes it is. Haber-Bosch process is where all our ammonia comes from, and it’s fed via petrochemical stocks. No oil = no food.
HB really requires hydrogen, which typically comes from fossil fuels. However, with some policy changes the hydrogen for ammonia production could come from GHG free sources instead.
You are right. However, with policy changes, we also need a tenable plan for a hydrogen economy that is physically and economically possible. The tech to produce and handle hydrogen on that scale does not exist, and much like carbon capture and storage, they are likely to remain a pipe dream; numbers don’t add up. We’ve spent a century building infrastructure that has no use other than extracting and processing fossil fuels. That we have enough resources to make the transition to a clean economy is in serious doubt at this time.
It does make a nice talking point to make everyone feel better about technology saving us from ourselves in the future, though. It’s certainly much more palatable than talking about the overshoot of the human population.
More innovation at play so we can continue our basic lack of understanding of plant & fungal communities!
Technology for idiocies sake! Wee!
To be fair, some people dedicate their lives to the study of fungi and still don’t fully understand them. Hell, after almost being able to scratch the surface in my own personal studies, I am open to the possibility of mycelium being sentient. Having seen mycelium adapt to food sources the way it does, makes me doubt a ton of what we do know about them.
We probably have to seriously reconsider scientific naming conventions because of them, actually. They can evolve and adapt almost spontaneously and it’s crazy. (They is some spry little things!)
What I am saying is that a “basic lack of understanding” is the understatement of the century.
