fredinNH t1_itiqve9 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:01 PM

I bet that 200,000 number sounds like a lot of weeds to non-farmers.

Gushinggrannies4u t1_itiv123 wrote on October 23, 2022 at 11:31 PM

Nearly 5 million a day sounds like a lot

fredinNH t1_itkutdo wrote on October 24, 2022 at 12:05 PM

I was trying to be funny, but as someone who has looked closely at soil as weeds are first emerging, I don’t think 5 million weeds is even that much.

marigolds6 t1_itlutk1 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 4:33 PM

It's basically a 40-acre field per day. So that raises questions of how often you have to repeat treatment, as well as how deep into the growing season.

domesticatedprimate t1_itk3jbj wrote on October 24, 2022 at 6:00 AM

That's a large number for farmers as well. It's per hour after all.

But to be fair, I wonder if farmers used to using chemicals even think in terms of the actual number of weeds.

mint_eye t1_itj0ust wrote on October 24, 2022 at 12:16 AM

Guessing from your comment, you are a farmer?

fredinNH t1_itkv0mc wrote on October 24, 2022 at 12:07 PM

Kind of. I married into a farming family and I do farm work including weed control but I have a job off the farm, but it’s a job that affords me lots of time off for farming.

marigolds6 t1_itluktw wrote on October 24, 2022 at 4:31 PM

Stuck this in a different discussion on this, but a typical "clean" herbicide managed 40 acre field with minimal yield loss has about 2 million weeds. Take away the herbicide management and that goes to 6M-8M.

I think the real question here is what growth stages can you use this. I'm assuming the machine learning is good enough to use this during emergence and obviously pre-emergence. But I doubt you could use this VT or later. I suspect you can't even use it after V3.

Because if you can't use it after V3, then you still need a chemical or mechanical pre-emergent control or a way to continue to control after V3 (likely an over the top spray, which has its own issues).