Farmers are looking to weeding robots as herbicide resistance solution. A new survey by the Illinois Center for Digital Agriculture finds more than half of corn farmers would adopt weeding robots.
Ag economist Shadi Attallah says the prevalence of herbicide resistance weeds is a major factor. A $40,000 robot and a $20,000 robot were tested, according to Attallah, and he says, “As you might imagine, the more expensive the robot, the more I’m going to wait until I have more weeds and more resistance until I adopt the robot.” More than 93 percent of planted row crop acres in the U.S. have genetically modified herbicide resistance, but Attallah says the efficacy is declining.
Some studies have shown that loss of efficacy via chemical control will lead to crop losses that can reach up to $100 billion per year. Attallah recently developed an integrated weed ecological and economic dynamic, or I-WEED, model system to understand what factors could impact farmer adoption. He says earlier use of robots did lead to better profits in the model.
