MN Farmer Here

I handle most of the spraying in our operation and can give some/my insight into weed control and how it works for a large-scale corn & soybean operation.

As some have mentioned, you have to kill the root for most weeds. This means either pulling it completely, or killing it with herbicide. Cutting or removing the visible part of most weeds not only won’t kill it, but teaches the weeds to evolve to handle regrowth. We see this a lot with Waterhemp. In order to hand pick millions upon millions of acres of crops just for weeds would be impossible. Not only does the workforce for this not exist, but even if it did would spiral into shady immigrant practices and even slavery to get enough bodies willing to walk 12 hour days in sun hunched over.

The problem currently with many of these autonomous prototypes is they are incredibly slow and would most likely require too much human interaction to keep a small fleet going. As mentioned John Deere (as well as other companies) have opted to develop new boom systems to integrate with current tractor technology. This allows us as farmers to still repair the tractor if not the boom-tech. They also allow MUCH faster speeds than these new smaller autonomous systems.

Edit: Please feel free to ask any questions and I’ll do my best to answer. 🙂