Robotic weeders are racing to replace glyphosate and dicamba

Weeds are the bane of a farmer’s existence—the “most important of all crop pests,” as one scientist put it. They kill crops by hogging nutrients in the soil, water, space and light. Worldwide, they are the largest source of yield losses.Since the mid-1990s, many row crop farmers have knocked out their weeds through genetics. Specifically, by planting bioengineered cotton, corn, and soybeans that withstand herbicides like glyphosate—the active ingredient in Roundup—and, more recently, like dicamba and 2,4-D. Now, though, there’s mounting evidence that weeds are evolving to tolerate those herbicides, with superweeds like Palmer amaranth and ryegrass adapting to one chemical after another. So these herbicides might not work on weeds, and they’re more controversial than ever. Could there be another solution? Like, say, robotic weeding machines? If we can get robots to pick our strawberries, why can’t they get rid of weeds, too? A handful of companies are working on it. Though the technology has been in development for years, weed-killing robots are still in their infancy, being trialed on farms across the world. Like, for instance, at Betteravia Farms, which grows Bonipak-brand vegetables on 9,000 acres in Santa Maria, California, and in Yuma, Arizona. Dylan Bognuda, a production engineer, supervises the agribusiness’s fleet of five automated weeders and thinners, which he deploys on 900 acres of organic celery, broccoli, and romaine lettuce...MORE