Sniper robot treats 500k plants per hour with 95% less chemicals | Challengers
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- Опубликовано: 26 окт 2022
- This “intelligent sharpshooter” farming robot distinguishes crops from weeds - and it could help feed 10 billion people.
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The world population will hit 10 billion around the year 2050. We must use our farmland efficiently in order to feed everyone, and one solution is to employ autonomous robots.
One of these robots is an "intelligent sharpshooter" that can distinguish crops from weeds - and then it shoots them with the appropriate treatment. Because of such high precision, the robot uses 95% less chemicals than traditional sprayers.
The robot also scans the entire farm and is able to geolocate each plant accurately within centimeters.
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Read more of our stories on the future of agriculture:
Farming robot kills 200,000 weeds per hour with lasers
► www.freethink.com/technology/...
Supermarket uses hydroponic farm to grow veggies onsite
► www.freethink.com/environment...
The challenges of wireless farming technologies - like transmitting data through mud
► www.freethink.com/environment...
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Do you think we are in agriculture's fourth revolution?
Yes.
Ag tech is the future of farming. I have done tech and farming.. the sensors and automation companies (small) I work and learn from are doing incredible things.. as Elon said.. we are coming to the age of abundance. Great time if you do not focus on the bad drama media that is so profitable to all our media companies. Ag tech stuff like this shows us a positive future
In my belief, this is only the beginning, the dawn.
The reason why I say so is that when it arrives at its fullest, this technology might be useful as one of many in a toolkit that involves polyculture, involving the restoration and involvement of native life, farm localization based on the geography, said native life, and ecosystem, removal and management of invasive species, and not just on land, but in the ocean as well, among other things.
I can see things like this being used to destroy and manage invasive species that have no place among ecosystems they are devastating, for example.
Fully automated agriculture is coming. The USA needs to invest in India where over 40% of the population is still in agriculture. It pains me to say this because that just means there will be a lot of poverty if so many people are employed in agriculture. In comparison only 4% of people in the USA are employed in agriculture. The only way is through using a lot of machinery and automation. I do want to start a company in India to automate farming but ideally the Indian government should support this. Instead Indian governments are supporting the farmers when in actuality the world is starting to phase out farmers. We Indians have always lacked thinking in terms of the bigger picture. I hope this is not screwed up.
@@SahilP2648 Vertical farming like aquaponics and hydroponics, also even having vertical livestock farming.
@@hunterhq295 vertical life stock farming only makes sense if there's some land restrictions. Ideally for life stock it is better to let them graze on open fields than put them in pens and stuff them with antibiotics which ultimately harm us. I think hydroponics and vertical farming should be done everywhere, and especially in USA because a lot of shipping costs and quality degradation because of shipping can be avoided because farming will then be done on site in the city.
The fact that it remembers around 4 million plants and created a digital copy of the whole field is absolutely mind blowing!!
Absolutely! Must be so rewarding for it to watch all 4 million grow 🙂
Definitely the engineer and nerd in me thinking this, but I wonder what a "file size" of a 4 mil crop plot would be, lol. And is this something that Verdant takes care of in a cloud based system or is all this data sent raw to the farmers for them to figure out.
Fascinating to me to think about such a large group of crops layed out as a digital footprint where every one has individual details. Really incredible possibilities.
@@tbren6707 I believe they do process the data in some way and have some sort of front end developed for the farmers cause i literally cannot imagine farmers scraping through all that raw data on their own haha
I think the real mind blowing is the automatic identification of the type of plant or weed, because as far as taking a photo with GPS is something we have mastered for more than a decade.
@@tbren6707 I suspect multiple plants are taken per picture... but worst case, 4mil photos at 4k image quality compressed is about 32TB, uncompressed/raw about 95TB... single SSD's are 8TB+ these days, so.. about 4 disks. fits in about 1.5 packs of cigarettes (for size comparison)... really no need for any cloud.
I work in precision agg and it's an interesting industry. When I see something like this I get excited but (there's always a but) I think this tech has a LONG way to go. Most farmers don't have perfectly flat square plots of land. They don't have incredibly expensive high tech tractors. They certainly don't have money to spend on tech that may not produce positive results. I can't imagine how much a machine like the one we are seeing in this video would cost... 1, 2, 3 million? What if it breaks... you have to pay a specialist $300/hr to come fix it I imagine considering it would probobly take an engineer to do so.
The $300 specialist is the JD solution to drive business to their dealer network.
@@drd4059 exactly
The tractor shouldn't be an issue here. It's just a toolcarrier like the New Hollands in this video. If it saves a farmer tens of thousands in pesticides and fertilizer it's a worthwile investments that most banks will back, even if the price tag ends up in the hundreds of thousands.
@@dohope4554 Lasers don't work very well in dusty conditions.
There are contractors in virtually every sector of ag business. The equipment investment will be sizable for a contractor to buy this equipment. The savings in ag chemicals and maintenance to spray equipment is the basis for overhead reduction to farners less the cost to hire contractors with this equipment. Will that reduction be enough to induce farmers to accept widespread contract spraying?
A great step, BUT this technology should be pared with the also pioneering laser technology being used to precisely & accurately kill weeds, without the need for any herbicides. If the combined technology could be used to REMOVE herbicides, & reduce the amount of fertilizers needed by 95%, then it could appeal to even the organic foods market.
You'll just burn the top of the weed, how would you laser weeds below the ground?
Herbicides kill the weed at a biological level.
@@sp3cterproductions A little bit of weed cover is probably just a good thing - covering the topsoil from radiation and evaporation. If you can selectively cut down the weeds regularly in such a way that they don't interfere with the crop, that would be enough. If some weeds grow too fast or kill the crop aggressively or something, you can kill those specifically and keep the rest.
Since they are already mapping all the weeds, categorizing them and correlating the density of certain weeds with crop yield, you might even find exactly which weeds are a net minus. Wouldn't surprise me if they find out some weeds have large positives due to improved soil health, insect deterrent effects and water retention.
This could basically enable no-till with some permaculture principles in large scale agriculture.
See Small Robot Co. In the UK
The first thing I thought of was using lasers instead of herbicides🤣👍👍
the idea that "superhuman farming" is simply "robotic farming" is bending my mind 🤯
marketing!
Someone has to build and design the robots. So its "superhuman"
it's just an idea, jus like have an idea to become god and have myself a 50 yard dick
A hundred years ago, about 80% of Americans worked on farms. Today, thanks to mechanization, it's about 3% or less. Going robotic means that could fall by another 90+%, while the quality of food delivered to customers can be nearly perfect.
@@NSResponder This is majorly incorrect. A hundred years ago, only about 25% of the American workforce was in agriculture.
Even going back another hundred years before that, it was only 70%. And even when going back to the middle ages, it varied from 55%-80% by country.
This is so so cool. These people are changing the world.
The tech is there to do this and much more.. many engineers are capable of doing jobs like this and would love to. So it's just up to investment going into development of agtech now.
@@hannesRSA So much food aid is sent to Africa but never farming equipment 🤔
@@-p2349 My household needs aid. Care to send some?
Nah not really...these guys are still ruining the world
Unlikely
There is a widespread misconceptionn about weed. As weed remains on the field it builds up humus. No precious fertlizer gets lost - vice versa is the case. The only thing someone needs to take care of is that weed does not overgrow and shadow csting on fuits and crops.
Killing weed in fact gives more room for specific pests of the crop, and is the reason for soil erosion.
On the long run therefore controlling the weed is much more beneficiary than its extintion.
Farmers want two things:
1) shiny new toys
2) the ability to fix their own stuff
Keep doing what you’re doing, keep right to repair in mind and you’ll do amazing things
This is complicated stuff too technically 😢😢😢😢 needs a degree in robotics and electronics
Correct right to repair is king
@@colgatetoothpaste4865 I’m sorry but you’re just plain wrong. People can look up schematics and fix smartphones and laptops and motherboards with ease, unless companies use intentionally difficult to repair things to increase profits. These things could be designed in a way that make repairs easier, with modular parts, replaceable items, fixable frames, ect. See all those shooters? Each could be a plug and play unit with detachable wires to a main hub, which could have a removable motherboard, power supply, and designed with repair in mind. Calibration processes could be done via integrated software that makes fixing fast.
I’m not saying all repairs are possible, what I’m saying is you can lower the costs of an average repair with some clever engineering.
@@colgatetoothpaste4865 you dont need a degree, just a tutorial and redilly available parts.
@@itsmebougie Nailed it. It's about design philosophy, and if done right, repairs are simple.
Imagine, a few years down the line, applying these principles to maintaining an edible polyculture ecosystem-farm. Not necessarily a big machine going through a flat field, but small drones tending to trees, vines, herbs, plants, pollinators and water features all in the location that is best for them based on local features. It could micromanage weeding and harvesting, but also composting, planting, grafting and nurturing keystone species and rare species while avoiding pesticide, nitrogen imbalance and soil compaction. A productive farm could look like the garden of Eden.
wouldnt even need giant clunky "path" infrastructure for silly human sized harvesters. it could be a dense jungle, designed by AI for maximum yields, and entirely tended by flying drone systems from above and smart hydroponic swimmer bots underneath
Such a farm would need a very high volume of drones with today's technology but I could imagine in the 2030s such a farm in operation.
The key would be to develop drone technology that is networked with various sets of data nodes within the farm. Such technology could also be used to scare away rodents and birds at key times in the growth cycle.
Add in drones which are self sufficient, using solar energy and docking on wind, hydro electric, or even utilising biomass from composting for energy, and you have a closed loop. Only missing piece is maintenance and material scarcity which for computer chips is already an issue.
With quantum computing on the horizon, we will also see another revolution in the speed and processing power of a.i., potentially infinite powers when they can stabilise the qubit systems.
I'm not convinced drones would be able to do the bulk of the work at any stage, or be self-sufficient. However, it's possible that farmers will have their own personal servers running AI drones constantly patrolling for pests and weeds.
@@djangodoescomputer Drone swarms could accomplish so many things, but the problem I see is weaponization. They have to potential to be as dangerous as nuclear or bio weapons and could enable too much power to be in the hands of too few.
This is going to change farming completely
Between this, indoor farms, etc. it's wild to think how different farming could look in 20 years.
No it will not you will have no farm or control, an nature always finds a way to destroy itself.
@@freethink property of land will shift from small farmers to an industrial complex that have the financial means to farm this way. Investment funds, the wealthy in general, are already scooping up farmland, usually with the help of complacent governments who pass laws that forces farmers out of the markets (see sri Lanka or the Netherlands)
Result... We'll depend more and more on corporations to feed ourselves
lol nope
I think not, more likely some greedy corporation that produces those things will just use it to milk farmers more charging them for like every weed that things kills and preventing any unauthorized repair or use.
As someone getting into precision agriculture and agribusiness, I'm really looking forward to considering the possibilities for broad acre cereals and legumes etc. The prices of chemicals are going up so much (around here glyphosate prices have soared) which means farmers will actually be forced to consider new options.
In the future I wouldnt even be surprised if we see farmers conslidate or have agreements with other farmers to recreate that type of "ecosystem" that kept soil healthy all those years ago, simply cus its cheaper and more practical.
world been taking massive W's so far.
Over regulation is driving up the price of chemicals that are used.
Why use chemicals to kill the weeds? Let's do go with a mechanical process like a spade bit on a drill. They can kill the weeds mechanical so there are no chemicals used!
@@PeterWayner
Because on a large field it would be very complex to target every week with a mechanical remove process.
@@bighands69 Exactly this. I live on a 'small' farm block of around 900 acres. The guy that leases it farms closer to 10000 acres. Pretty much every paddock has a water tank on it, so he can just drive his sprayer out and fill it up and go. It takes them well less than a day to do 900 acres.
Now compare this to the cons of mechanical weeding. You will have to use a tractor with thin wheels, which instantly decreases the size of the implement you can use, so it will take longer. Different weeds come at different times in the growing cycle so you will have to do this multiple times. Once a crop is a certain height this just won't work. I could go on with a heap more problems.
I'm all for reducing chemical usage on crops, but I also understand the realities. I worked on an organic veggie farm for years, where we mostly weeded mechanically with tractors (or hand weeded, I still have PTSD from hoeing out weeds). It takes a long time, and has to be done when the weeds are tiny. As a farmer, things nearly always get out of hand and suddenly you are behind, and now the weeds are too big.
That's the kind of work I've always wanted to do...if I can master computer science one day
You don’t have to be a master to get started. AgTech is very welcoming. Start small and grow working in the industry.
@@APhamx7 I started learning on my own and luckily I also just got accepted in a computer science program :) I will be looking for internships into AgTech if possible. Thank you for your comment. It motivated me!
If this works, the future looks alittle more brighter to me. And i hope all farmers will be able to use it. Great work! And thank you for doing something thats good for the planet
@Σ
People are not going to be eating crickets.
@@bighands69 In some Asia contries they actually do eat them :D just pointing out a fact :D
@@bighands69 YOU WILL EAT ZE BUGS >:D
You're welcome
@@Justin1337Sane it's a survival food and strange delicacy type of thing even here, you don't normally eat it as a staple
This is so great! Amidst all the bad news, it's great to see people working so hard for solutions. Power on!!
As a farmer and botanist I find this to be a total pipe dream and incredibly terrifying. This is because it does one thing, allow them to control agriculture even more than they already do.
Cry more
@@aierce do you attack everybody who tries to share valuable perspectives with you? You will not go far in this life, I wish you the best but I know it won’t help one single but.
Ants: "F*ck the Star Destroyer coming
its great to know that farmers are getting on board with new methods too!
Many Farmers are actually eager to have new technologies. My native village farmers in India were eager to know when I will be building a drone to spray fertilizers over crops and deweed them.
Farmers have been at the cutting end of technology for years, at least in western countries.
Not interested at all! Keep your witchcraft!
@@brandonfoley7519 XD
Another great video by freethink. This is why I have hope in humanity. We always tackle problems, and find a solution.
Are you serious? This is a solution in your mind?
@@brandonfoley7519 What? yes this is a solution...no its not a solution to all humanities problems...but its a solution for a problem farmers have...If you want a solution for all humanities problems...remove greed.
Coming from a family background in agriculture , weeds are actually allowed to grow & then used as manure in organic way of farming so it reduces the dependency on synthetic and artificial fertilizers.
Still this maybe useful in commerical farming rather than conventional farming.
I’m a farmer currently, never heard of this, could you elaborate?
@@Beyonder8335 in the eastern regions , they really hate weeds as well but sometimes when it comes to cyclic farming they allow them to grow so it can be used as manure for the future crops so we don't have to use any artificial ones.
But not all weeds some weeds are taken away and burnt since they aren't that useful as manure. But this works only in conventional way of agriculture where crops are cycled seasonally not really practiced that much now since produce & results is kinda slow but doesn't DMG the soil too much.
So this conventional method is not fit for the current scenario where the produce is meant to fast and that's where this automated method might fit in.
@@ak-ub1ym yeah most Asian farmers use weeds as manure too especially in rice farming where they rotavate the ground, also a lot of mulching is present in traditional Asian farms.
@@siddharthsingh7508 I think you guys mean using weeds as compost, not manure. Manure is just animal dung, and in a standard greens, manure, straw compost mixture, weeds are the greens.
@@littlehippo5004 oh yeah my bad, we call manure as anything that nourishes the land, lost in translation i might say.
This is beautiful. Engineering and design will save humanity. Nothing else will
lol do you know the food waste in murica???.....
"How many plants do you have in your smart farm?" "1,356,732... Give or take 1 or 2.."
4 million carrots in that one tiny field. The scale of modern agriculture is staggering. I think it's great that large companies are investing in it, however if it doesn't become economical enough for small farms it's just going to further drive consolidation and food monopolies like the one Bolthouse apparently has on carrots. All that said, it would be interesting to do precision watering the same way, especially in deserts like California
all I can think is "wow that's awesome" really cool, I wish I was a part of it somehow.
This is super interesting stuff!!! i also hear about back in the old days they used frequency generators to accelerate growth. There are also companies that use this tech to ward off insects like bed bugs and mosquitos. using this is farming is probably going to be Earth changing.
it kills live weeds, but what about seeds? part of the reason for drenching is to use pre emergent for seeds buried down
Just run the tractor over the field more often. Stop the lifecycle post seed and no seeds will even have a chance to develop. Eventually no more weeds.
THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT.
WE NEED MORE INNOVATORS LIKE THIS.
That auto-pollination would maybe be useful with vanilla beans, since they have to be pollinated by hand.
I once read a book series Zork. One of the books taken place in a post nuclear war environment. The heroes come across a huge robotic vehicle that kept planting little tres in the desert. That is what it was programmed to do forever.
Now this is a great use of the power of advanced computing, voluminous data and precision equipment. It maximizes crop yields in a way that human physical and mental power cannot on a large scale.
If it can image the field and map it, nothing tells me this couldn’t run autonomously AND AT NIGHT which is massive. Reducing daytime tasks for farmers is major
This is cool however, if you patent this technology, no other farm industry can make this, which means you won't help the world but yourself. My country will most likely never get it because of how companies stop others from making the same tech.
When they show how profitable this is, there will be competition (that’s the hope anyway)
wow the intro just blew my mind, like i just realized where the future is headed. needing to be more efficient in terms or more micro oriented focus.
Finally someone took the idea I had and made it work!
I always felt that if roomba was possible, so could a GPS controlled robot that goes between crop rows and destroys/digs up the weeds
I'm terrified by the ever dwindling number of insects of all kinds. I mean, I live in the foothills of the Appalachia Mountains. Shocking. Alarming
All nonsense.
@@bighands69 go on, explain
@@bighands69 Haven't been outside in a while huh?
@@brandonfoley7519
People just putting up their antidotal feelings and the ramblings of academic political activists does not mean anything really.
My farms are covered in insects. There are so many of them that they will actively eat foliage.
I would have never thought that this would be possible. So incredible to see it happening!! So many incredibly smart people out there, and I love it!
This is the coolest stuff I've seen in months, seems amazing and I believe it's just a matter of time until they succeed!
The idea is absolutely amazing. The question remains the assessment of the results, fine calibration then hoping for the best results.
I'm designing an education that follows the student like this, but for now, the carrots receive a more personalised approach 😆
I mean, we hope you're not running over your students with a tractor
@@freethink I left teaching, now I just do theory. In a poetical view, yes, the system is running over our students with a tractor. I love the aproach of using the precision to reduce the harm we where doing with pesticides, 95% is a lot.
Awesome! Now we need them to be autonomous and powered by solar and we have the perfect ag machine that's truly environmentally friendly.
It may be a matter of time! We're seeing autonomous construction robots emerge and you could certainly imagine a place like this (central California) would be a great place to also use solar to, for example, recharge swappable batteries and eliminate the need for a lot of fossil fuels. Time will tell!
Making it autonomous isn't particularly difficult, it only really has to drive in a straight line and not deal with any other traffic. The problem is that they break down regularly, which requires someone riding along to make repairs anyways, so making it autonomous doesn't actually save you any labor costs
I am wondering why they are not autonomous already as attaching that thing to a tractor that has to drive at snail speed makes no sense at all unless your goals was to invent a torture device.
if it was autonomous it also could be much smaller and cheaper that that huge monstrosity and nobody woud care that it crawls slower than turtle because eventually it will finish the job
@@deltaxcd The tractor isn't big to transport a person. Its big and heavy on purpose to plow and move heavy objects, this is just one of many things a tractor can do. Its also why tractors will be the last thing to be electrified as they need LOTS of power all day long. The real game changer is the decrease in petrochemical based fertilizers and pesticides used.
@@barryraymond9004 I dont think so. Tractors are useful because of their torque. Electric motors provide the most torque at 0 rpm.
Tractors like these are already autonomous and have been a decade. They just go around a predetermined path.
I think were prolly gonna see a few get wired up like you would a lawnmower in the future.
F***ing yeah!!! This is a project with underappreciated level of difficulty. Amazing work, guys!
This is absolutely amazing!
Working for this company is just mind blowing 💪🏽 the future of ag in the making!
What was that thing about poly-culture farming, i.e. growing more than one crop in a field? Was that ever commercially viable outside of peoples gardens?
Yes. Here in western Canada more and more farmers are doing it on broad acre farms.
@@robertslingerland8522 Example? And I’m not talking about crop rotation, I’m talking about one large multi-acre field with several different crops.
@@jeffw8218 sorry. My bad. I should have provided some examples. The most popular one is peas and oats. Another very common one is peas and canola. On our farm we have also tried oats and mustard once and we are always looking for other combinations that might work. It's not crazy popular yet but every year I see more people trying it out. We usually do it on 160 acre or larger fields
Awesome video, putting a very optimistic light on the future of farming!
Hope all is well with you and your families, and happy holidays!
Would the produce here pass for organically farmed 😂 ❤️ amazing solutions and amazing channel.
Yeah! It's an organic weeding and fertilizing robot.
@Han Boetes 1:23 the co-founder says "organic weeding machine". Product could mean many things but my guess is they use a high-powered vinegar of sorts to organically weed fields. I'm sure other projects are killing mechanically. The nice thing about this approach is it doesn't disrupt the soil. I read online somewhere that Verdant is going to be adding lasers to kill weeds so they could potentially use no liquids at all.
@Han Boetes yeah I saw another company that does that with lasers…kills the weeds with lasers
Organic food is (mostly) a scam that is bad for the environment.
Organic farms need more land (land use being the worst part of farming environmentally) to produce the same amount of nutrition as a traditional farm.
This machine is great because it uses far fewer pesticides/fertilizers per m2 of farm.
@@mikelahood9600 wouldn't vinegar lower soil pH? Or do they balance that out with a corresponding basic treatment?
Very cool technology . Go Verdant Robotics !
Another startup has another take on this exact problem (lowering use of chemicals) called Faunaphotonics. They can via cemeras detect areas on the field with bad insects and only spray where its needed.
I suspect weeds will start evolving to look like the crops they’re growing next to, like how they evolved to break off just above the root if you pull them.
Interesting point
I thought it sniped the weeds with lasers for a couple minutes haha
There are actually robots that do this! www.freethink.com/technology/farming-robot
Lasers can be used, but use too much energy to be a good solution: that is the cost per shot is too high relative to the value of the weed.
As someone who is studying ML, python and loves robotics and also growing stuff I love this video!
As someone who doesn't study ML, python and absolutely hates robotics I love this video!
Youre probably not going to be doing anything with that to be honest. For one, you're a pajeet, so it's basically guaranteed that you're going to be annoying everyone in the west and for two, most of the ground work for this stuff has already been done.
A marvelous use of technology.
This is absolutely brilliant !!!
Awesome Tech! Wonder how long before you don't need a driver as well.
Probably not so long! We're seeing autonomous construction robots entering the marketplace, and driverless cars are pretty effective in environments that are geofenced like farms could be. ruclips.net/video/6oqEKyseu2U/видео.html
They pretty much don't already. Its just that if it drives into a tree, it might cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. So paying a guy to sit in there for a few weeks during harvest to stop the .01% risk is worth it.
Pretty cool concept, especially when you think of things like grapes, or berries. If it can determine if they are ready to harvest, then zap off the stem, to drop off the fruit, it'll make all crops that are currently not harvestable by machines, possible.
As a farmer I don’t think this will happen in my generation. Picking fruit needs to be done very carefully and current machines are not able to or they are way way to expensive
Some good scientist that are working on keeping people alive instead of killing them thank you so much👍🏻
Not only this, but it should be autonomous and solar powered.
1 step at a time
And
Fly
Too.
And cook 😂
Actually multiple steps concurrently. It’s all happening. @@armaniwebb4467
This can be a godsend in arid climates.
I love this. This is WONDERFUL technology. May this technology withstand environmentally unsound competitors.
Why are they farming in California in the first place, where there's a water shortage? Farm in states that get rain!
This area is near enough to the coast to receive most of it’s precipitation from the marine layer that comes in in the mornings. The water table here is high here for the same reason. These coastal areas (like around Watsonville & Salinas) aren’t as arid as the Central Valley.
Sun temperature soil
this technique still relies on petrol and deep tillage. seems like an unsustainable practice, despite how novel it may seem.
I thought up this same concept years ago but it was geared towards killing pest insects and a computer could photo ID the insects killing them with a laser or BB gun, but this squirt gun technique could spot apply insecticide.
I think dropping vinegar on weeds could effect the PH of the soil so I don’t use it, but maybe I’m wrong about that. I’m not sure.
In 1990, Concord, Inc., a small farm equipment company in Fargo, ND, bought the North American rights to an Australian-developed device that detected and sprayed individual weeds all along the length of a tractor-pulled spray arm. Detectspray was the beginning of precision detection and spraying.
pew-pew!
Interesting concept and definitely impressive to see the level of accuracy and the mapping capabilities they have developed. The plant ID aspect is potentially gamechanging if it is as accurate as we are told.
I'm not convinced by its scalability as it seems to be dependent on heavy fossil fuel consumption and probably best used in monocultures like the ones they have shown.
Their solution solves part of the issues linked to overusing chemical inputs but fossil fuel depended agriculture with its heavy land use imprint is still incredibly vulnerable to climatic events (drought, frost etc.), disease and the general degredation of top soil linked to compaction and tilling. Not to mention the impact on biodiversity at scale that we should be striving to bring back instead of replace.
Pollination via machine is impressive but what happened to pollinators?
Would be interesting to see how you could harness this technology for agroforestry or other more resilient farming methods though
Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Sure it would be grand if this solved every problem at once but that's not how progress works.
With the ability to threat each plant individually it should be possible to mix several crops in the same field as they mentioned in the video. Most farms is using tractors so I don't think the amount of needed diesel will increase.
If it mechanically is possible to harvest individuell plants and remove weeds. Then it should be possible to have fields that is never tiled or bare.
I have one question: is it owned by Monsanto ? Or is this a new game in town?
In the future you will have to take a mark to buy or sell anything, these centralized industrial farming practices will play a big part.
Can't see this being affordable or accessible to the developing world where the vast majority of the world's food is grown, at least not in the short to medium term, and it is there that the damage from intensive agrochemical approaches is most acute as controls and protections to people and the environment are much less applied.
I doubt his company cares. Like the majority of startups, their goal is to build an aquistion target and get bought up by some gigantic corporation for a billion dollars.
Which would rather undermine his rhetoric about motivations for developing this technology to support regenerative agriculture and sustainable food production if it's only affordable for large scale industrial farms in the West.
@@oootoob the only rhetoric I heard was making farming more profitable. That’s what it all boils down to, profit.
Not every company has to think about every market, though. There's plenty of other companies developing systems for developing countries. It's just that this isn't one of them.
"the vast majority of food is grown in developing countries " : that's not quite true.
The fact that the robot costs more than any what any farm can make in 10 years is also a pretty cool feature ig
One would need to see the price when it is produced in reasonable quantities and also calculate against it all the pesticides and herbecides which maybe don't need to be bought and then there is the priceless effect of the soil not being lifeless and dead or these poisons not being in our food. Sinking healthcare costs would be a factor should we be able to get rid of most if not all herbecides and pesticides i would assume. Consumers are meanwhile becoming more and more aware of all of this like we here now and therefor are maybe willing to pay for such till would become industry standard.
@@kinngrimm Looks like this is an incentive problem. Individual business will not be benefited directly from this technology especially in the short term. Unless this technology is subsidized or enforced nobody would consider it.
@@minhducnguyen9276 to me it looks like a technology especially made for these huge american farms which go from one horizon to the other(i know those are not only in america, but i just have that picture in my brain). There i think they will really shine. The smaller the farm the less this will make sense just from a cost perspective, but also on how things are done there. The smallest farms are often already going a regenerativ way where certain aspects of animals for nitrates and grassing for food is combined with crop production with no use of herbecides, pesticides and no use of antibiotics. These seem to have certain advantages also in terms of soil, where it is more protected against dry periods and more natural bacteria which help the plant life.
Subsidize i would maybe therefor also make dependend on size of the farm as if a medium sized farm may have need for just one , huge farms may needs 20 or more, but therefor also have certain synergies they will profit of, while the small farms i don't even see a need for this aslong it is not already cheaply available and the kinks being worked out and therefor it wouln't cost them their livelyhood to make a bad investment. Also, in general, independent where one lives, subsedize as good practice should always be checked regularly if they are still needed in that sector of industry, Just too often these seemingly go on forever, costing a pretty penny while the industry is already making huge profits.
this is a potentially very big and very important leap forward in agriculture.
heres hoping it works out in the end.
We need this.. thank you
Just don’t exclusively license it to John Deere
, or anyone in an exclusive license at all.
But, insanely awesome and probably a very big step in friendlier and better farming
Would have been more impressive if he had a count of the plants in the field instead of just guessing "about 4 million" after saying they remember every plant.
Wow! New ways to establish monoculture fields!
This is awesome! And a GREAT reminder that agriculture is much more advanced that people realize!
Glad you liked the video! We think agriculture tech is awesome, too 🌳❤️
Good new, but if we don't do something about the food that we waste at the same time, the system is still inefficient. Technological miracle like these is great however it can only carry us so far if the overconsumption and wasteful issues ain't solve.
I said the same thing pretty much. Really, the wastefulness is the worse part of the two you mentioned. Markets throw away an insane amount of food every day.
What's terrifying is that this will eventually force weeds to mimic the appearance of the crop their trying to protect.
Nice and smart thought!!
Brilliant idea !
I farm 1400 acres and needing to spray the wheat I recently planted because of the weeds but they're not everywhere they're localized to one strip down each row exactly where the tailing came off my combine so to be able to avoid spraying every square inch of the field would save a ton of chemicals!
Awesome topic... thank you.
This is going to make, as Elon Musk said recently .. "The Age of Abundance".
I have seen it already, farming is being automated at a very fast pace. I grow, I know.
Most seem to be (voluntarily?) blind to the fact that we DON'T have a food production problem. That WE ALREADY HAVE enough being produced to feed the whole world. But the way the system works (immense amount of lands to produce soy to animal stock, specialty and expensive fruits or 'superfoods' to feed riches all around, and land concentration in very few hands), it doesn't matter how productive we are, what will happen is the system will readjust itself so that it will make even more luxury eating possible, while keeping billions starving, as it already do.
What we urgently need is to question the root of our economic and political system, to make people realize the absurdity of having most of humanity living under vulnerability, food insecurity or even worse, misery.
@cominaengenharia - The main problem is transport, storage and distribution. We have a lot of countries that have an exploding population and neither the infrastructure nor the money to support them.
Truly an amazing innovation
Amazing video @Freethink , keep it up 👍
How do we keep biodiversity and microbes and insects/pollinators? How do we stop monocultures? How do we scale back on land used for agriculture to bring back forests. Indoor stacked hydroponics in the future maybe, once we have 100x more energy than our current fossil fuels, but clean energy. For now, every time you say no to meat and dairy, and yes to vegetables or shellfish, you are reducing the land and resources and fresh water required to sustain your own personal life.
This was the exact question running through my mind. Other being why is no one taking about this in the comments.
This is crazy engineering and tech.
they're micro-managing crops. this tech is nuts!
Brilliant!
Thanks for the hope 👍🏽✌🏽🌺
This is majestic!
Thanks!
Wow, thank you so much! Really appreciated!
If you'd like, email me at toby@freethink.com and I'll send you a small thank you gift!
Such important technology! At last!
Mind. Blown.
This is incredible and awesome! The creator group behind this is are some kick ass people. Nice.
I loved every second of this video! Thank you so much!
Machines are so organic!
I'd watch an entire documentary about the "4th revolution of farming" sounds inspiring and healthy.
I love it! Why not use lasers, water blasts or a mechanical stab to kill unwanted weeds without poisons?
Deterance vs elimination I suppose.
Mechanical is way too slow, lasers are too narrow and would not kill roots.
Good question! There are some that use lasers (www.freethink.com/technology/farming-robot ), though Jonathan raises a good point that there may be tradeoffs.
Mechanical stabbing is prohibited by the Geneva Convention 😥
You have to get all the roots out or they will just grow back
@@jonathan2847 Admit it, you love chemical poisons.
Finally a useful innovation in this channel haha
This is mind blowing.
Snipin's a good job mate
Education, self belief and getting it done