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Before we can dream about artificial intelligence and weed-killing robots making toxic herbicides obsolete, these technologies need to address a different pressing matter — ensuring the long-term viability of organic farming.
This may seem like a strange assertion, especially since the organic food sector is so vibrant and the demand for organic produce from consumers has never been stronger.
Yet, what is taking place on organic farms throughout the country, particularly in California, is of real concern. Namely, the high cost and growing unavailability of skilled labor to deal with weeds. As is, net income margins are slim, and labor issues are exacerbating the matter.
“Everyone in organic struggles with weeds, and the bills are huge,” said Steven A. Fennimore, extension specialist and weed ecophysiologist in the department of plant sciences at UC-Davis. “Labor represents 66% of the total weed control costs in lettuce, and many farm owners have to provide housing, medical and food to H-2A workers. California has an extremely tight housing market, and with the average farmworker in Oxnard, California making $32,000, they cannot afford to live here. It is a crisis.”
Rob Freelen, managing director at Sozo Ventures, whose firm has invested in Carbon Robotics, a robotic weed-killing technology, echoes this concern.
“Finding 20 trained people, when a farm is experiencing real weed pressure, is growing increasingly difficult. This problem is compounded by the fact that there are just not enough H-2A workers.”
TECHNOLOGY BECOMES MORE IMPORTANT BY THE DAY
For the last decade, camera-guided cultivation has been deployed on many farms to deal with weeds, and as technology advances at a rapid pace, the solutions are demonstrating their worth.
In tests near Salinas, California, Professor Fennimore and his colleagues evaluated automated weeders that were trained using artificial intelligence for use in lettuce fields. The smart weeders built by FarmWise Labs Inc. and Stout Industrial Technology, Inc. removed between 32% and nearly 100% of purslane and other weeds. That reduced the need for hand-weeding between 13% and 62%, and the weeders proved more cost-effective in fields where there were more weeds.
Carbon Robotics, which has raised $67M from investors, uses machine learning, artificial intelligence and lasers to kill weeds. Since its technology does not involve pulling weeds from the ground, the soil’s microbiology remains undisturbed, and the company counts numerous organic farms as clients, such as Braga Fresh, Triangle Farms, Cal-Organic, Grimmway Farms and Taylor Farms.
“Carbon Robotics’ LaserWeeder is a revolutionary tool that dramatically reduces out-of-pocket costs while offering predictability and control to our weeding methods,” said Juan Calderon, director of farming operations at Duncan Family Farms.
With sophisticated weed-killing technology yielding very meaningful results, what stands in its way of mass adoption is both affordability and accessibility — the exact challenges that organic food faces.
While many of the large organic customers of Carbon Robotics may be able to handle a seven-figure capital expenditure, the company has partnered with AgDirect, an incredibly respected agriculture equipment financing organization, to help ease the burden of acquiring one of these machines.
Still, for many small and mid-size organic farmers, this technology may be out of reach. As such, some of these operators are pooling resources and sharing weeding technology solutions, or they are buying what they can afford.
“I know a 10-acre farmer who invested $35,000 in a camera guidance system that goes on a tractor he is driving. He does not have access to labor, and this is solving a major problem for him,” said Eric Gallandt, professor of weed ecology at the University of Maine.
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
Currently, Carbon Robotics and its peers are focusing on the specialty crop market — the leafy greens and many other fruits and vegetables that we eat on a daily basis.
For consumers, this is a real positive, knowing that technology is being utilized to ensure the stability of the supply chain. Longer term, it is the industry’s goal to deploy fully autonomous robots to perform all functions on a farm, such as planting, cultivating, harvesting, packaging and data analysis.
Yet, if we really want to decrease the impact of the super-toxic chemicals sprayed on America’s Heartland, such as glyphosate, atrazine, dicamba and 2,4-D, we are going to need robots to handle the weeds on millions of acres of GMO corn, soy, canola and cotton. But competing with the large chemical sprayers is easier said than done.
“Can we make laser weeders that go 18mph and extend 160 feet wide and have enough of them to cover 90M acres over a six-week period?” asked UC-Davis’s Steven Fennimore. “We don’t have the equipment to deal with that yet, and I am not sure if we ever will.”
Until then, we need to view AI-robots as an effective solution to keep the organic farming industry viable, and similarly, we should not be misled into thinking that they will serve as an impetus to get conventional farmers to go organic.
Robot industry experts are very clear on what will help encourage the transition.
“Beyond being equipped with tools that enable cost-effective practices, farmers will switch to organic as demand in the marketplace for organic fruits and vegetables increases, and this will happen as education about the effects of these toxic chemicals becomes more widespread. Organic groups need to drive this growth forward,” said Paul Mikesell, CEO and founder of Carbon Robotics.
(According to Carbon Robotics, the inside of one of its machines has more computing power than 24 Teslas.)
(The moment a laser strikes, even a tiny weed hiding in this chard is taken out with pinpoint accuracy.)
(Comparison: On the left, laserweeded onions, and on the right, unweeded onions.)
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With gratitude, 
Max Goldberg, Founder |
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