[HN Gopher] The Weeds Are Winning
___________________________________________________________________
The Weeds Are Winning
Author : Jimmc414
Score : 81 points
Date : 2024-11-08 15:55 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.technologyreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.technologyreview.com)
| krunck wrote:
| https://archive.ph/Euc4P
| jtbayly wrote:
| This is just a link to the actual article here:
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/10/1105034/weeds-cl...
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! We've switched to that from
| https://longreads.com/2024/11/07/the-weeds-are-winning/ above.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| > Monsanto claimed it was "highly unlikely" that glyphosate-
| resistant weeds would become a problem. There were, of course,
| those who correctly predicted that such a thing was inevitable
|
| I've started noticing that this happens all the time, across all
| fields. Experts disagree, the expert with the most positive
| outlook is the one whose opinion wins out, and we find ourselves
| in trouble years/decades later.
|
| I've adopted a "treat every expert as a lawyer" mindset now that
| has helped illuminate some of this for me. I prefer to listen to
| podcasts where people in the field talk to each other, rather
| than someone presenting the information to the layperson. There's
| a lot of jargon but you can very easily get a sense of (1) what
| issues does everyone agree on (2) what issues are they bickering
| on, and what their reasons are
| kylebenzle wrote:
| There has not been a single plant/weed agricultural expert in
| the field in the last 20+ years who has said our overuse of
| herbicides is not a bad thing and will result in ever more
| resistant weeds.
|
| I think the confusion is always the same, laymen listening to
| industry or company spokesmen who have a profit motives, the
| scientist have no such confusion.
| QuasiGiani wrote:
| Profit motives... the very sickening sickness of The System.
| cyberax wrote:
| Why?
| voxic11 wrote:
| > First, the company had been selling Roundup for years
| without any problems. Second, and perhaps most important, the
| company's scientists had just spent more than a decade, and
| many millions of dollars, trying to create the Roundup-
| resistant plants that they desperately wanted -- soybeans and
| cotton and corn. It had been incredibly difficult. When I
| interviewed former Monsanto scientists for my book on biotech
| crops, one of them called it the company's "Manhattan
| Project."
|
| > Considering how hard it had been to create those crops,
| "the thinking was, it would be really difficult for weeds to
| become tolerant" to Roundup, says Rick Cole, who is now
| responsible for Monsanto's efforts to deal with the problem
| of resistant weeds.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/03/11/148290731/wh.
| ..
| banannaise wrote:
| Of course it's easier for it to happen in nature than for
| them to do it in a lab. The way nature does this is that
| when you kill untold numbers of the ones that aren't
| resistant, you're left with the ones that are. If you used
| that method with our actual crops, you would nearly wipe
| out the crops and cause massive food crises.
| azeirah wrote:
| Weeds are just plants
|
| You can eat weeds, and they turn back into plants or crops.
|
| It's just some word trickery.
| Thrymr wrote:
| But not productively. In monoculture agriculture, all but a
| single planted crop is a weed by definition, and we have no
| way of making use of it at scale. Sure, you can eat
| dandelion greens from your yard, but that does not scale.
|
| There are a lot of benefits to quality, nutrition,
| environment, and community to growing food at smaller
| scale, but it is certainly more expensive.
| azeirah wrote:
| You don't need to grow anything. You can just eat the
| plants. Just be careful in how you decide what plants to
| eat.
|
| My cats eat plants that somehow seem to grow out of
| concrete. I have no idea how a plant can even grow out of
| concrete at all, but it totally works.
|
| It probably has some minerals in it. Is it very
| nutritious? Probably not.
|
| You can also just eat stinging nettle. Make soup out of
| it. Free meal. One of the most nutritious plants that is
| available in almost all western countries, and probably
| grows outside of western countries too.
|
| It's... I dunno why people don't trust nature or the
| wisdom in their bodies anymore.
|
| Another example. Eat an apple. You're fine.
|
| Dig seeds out of the apple, crush them and turn them into
| a paste. If you eat that paste, you will die.
|
| Yet we eat apples all day. We trust apples. If something
| looks, feels and smells edible? Probably fine. Maybe ask
| a few locals like some birds, cats and dogs because they
| know nature a little bit better than you do probably.
|
| If you eat in the same way that Werner Herzog makes
| films, you'll be invincible.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Dig seeds out of the apple, crush them and turn them
| into a paste. If you eat them, you will die.
|
| Only if you eat a couple pounds of the seeds. I eat one
| apple's worth of seeds every time I eat an apple, it's
| fine.
| cyberax wrote:
| The emergence of resistance to glyphosate was a given. Monsanto
| itself sells glyphosate-resistant plants, so we know exactly
| how it can evolve.
|
| The resistant gene was isolated from an Agrobacterium strain.
| And these bacteria have been doing gene editing in plants for
| hundreds of millions of years, completely naturally. So it was
| just a matter of time until weeds gained the resistant genes
| from it. Or evolved them via a different mechanism.
|
| Still, glyphosate bought us at least six decades of relatively
| weed-free agriculture for staple crops. Resistance is still not
| universal, so glyphosate will continue working for a while,
| helping to lower the price of food.
| hollerith wrote:
| >glyphosate will continue working for a while, helping to
| lower the price of food.
|
| And I'll continue to choose the version grown without
| glyphosate even though the price is higher.
| cyberax wrote:
| Why? Because it has better vibes?
| titanomachy wrote:
| The EPA says that glyphosate isn't carcinogenic in
| humans. The WHO says that it is.
|
| The EPA says it's not an endocrine disruptor. Numerous
| studies and experts suggest that it is, although I can't
| find any major government or NGO that agrees.
|
| I'm not a doctor or molecular biologist. How should I
| decide which experts to trust? I can easily afford food
| grown without glyphosate, so that's what I eat.
|
| EDIT: I'm not religious about this, presumably all the
| restaurant food I eat is grown with glyphosate. But my
| local grocery store only has organic produce, I usually
| buy that since it's convenient and the cost difference is
| not a big deal.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The WHO says that it is.
|
| No, it doesn't.
|
| > I'm not a doctor or molecular biologist. How should I
| decide which experts to trust? I can easily afford food
| grown without glyphosate, so that's what I eat.
|
| Yeah, and I tuned my car to emit extra black smoke for
| better motor vibration. It now ROARS and consumes more
| gas, helping to stimulate the economy!
| titanomachy wrote:
| "IARC classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to
| humans".
|
| The International Agency for Research on Cancer is part
| of the WHO.
|
| https://www.iarc.who.int/featured-news/media-centre-iarc-
| new...
|
| What am I missing?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Did you read that link? Group 2 is pretty poorly
| explained to laypeople, Aloe Vera is listed as "Possibly
| carcinogenic", 2B.
|
| High concentration and quantity and long term exposure to
| glyphosate is probably bad for the farmers spraying, but
| their listing of glyphosate is completely irrelevant for
| the consumer buying a crop that was sprayed with it. They
| never once mention any danger to consumers in that entire
| article.
|
| Even in that limited case (occupational hazard), the data
| is mixed, and the IARC says that the US AHS study of 50k
| pesticide applicators did not find a correlation between
| cancer and glyphosate. They say that doesn't overrule the
| other findings.
|
| They are being hyperconservative for the safety of
| workers. That literally doesn't apply to you, the
| consumer.
| cyberax wrote:
| > "IARC classified glyphosate as probably carcinogenic to
| humans".
|
| This category includes: carpentry, bracken ferns, aloe
| vera extract and traditional Asian pickled vegetables,
| magnetic fields, radio, coffee.
|
| I'm not kidding, go see yourself:
| https://monographs.iarc.who.int/list-of-classifications
| (group 2B).
|
| This agency has zero credibility now. No serious agency
| (EPA, EFSA, etc.) classifies it as dangerous: https://www
| .efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2023-07/glyph...
|
| It's like I can cite the Cato institute and Heritage
| Foundation to say that we should ban electric cars,
| because they are polluting the air with brake dust.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Coffee seems to now be group 3, but your point stands. 2B
| is meaningless as a consumer guidance.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| You're presumably thinking of the IARC monograph. You can
| read how the classifications work in their own preamble:
| https://monographs.iarc.who.int/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/07/P...
|
| Specifically,
|
| > A cancer hazard is an agent that is capable of causing
| cancer, whereas a cancer risk is an estimate of the
| probability that cancer will occur given some level of
| exposure to a cancer hazard. The Monographs assess the
| strength of evidence that an agent is a cancer hazard.
| The distinction between hazard and risk is fundamental.
|
| > The identification of a cancer hazard should trigger
| some action to protect public health, either directly as
| a result of the hazard identification or through the
| conduct of a risk assessment.
|
| The key thing to recognize here is they are making
| preliminary assessments of existing lines of research,
| looking for studies into whether an agent has been
| associated with cancer in humans, animals, or
| mechanistically, and characterizing the strength of such
| evidence, as to whether or not something _can_ cause
| cancer.
|
| The purpose of doing this is so that other standards
| bodies can assess the actual dose/response relationship
| and your probability of getting cancer from levels of
| exposure. Glyphosate in in group 2A, along with things
| like being a barber, night shift work, hot beverages, red
| meat. Lots of things the EPA does not ban.
|
| Why? Because as the organization itself says, hazard does
| not mean risk. The fact that studies show a robust
| association between one thing and some increase in cancer
| incidence, at any dose, does not mean the level of
| exposure any regular person experiences raises their
| probability of getting cancer by any meaningful amount we
| should care about or regulate.
|
| The problem here is you're almost certainly not actually
| reading the publications of either IARC or the EPA, which
| are not in conflict with each other. You're reading
| science journalism, which almost universally presents
| this in the most misleading, fear-mongering fashion
| possible to attract eyeballs.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Thanks, this is helpful context.
|
| Basically they conclude that the chemical has the
| potential to increase cancer incidence in some dose. But
| they are not making any statement about whether
| glyphosate as used in agriculture increases cancer risk?
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Pretty much. The purpose of the IARC monograph is to
| inform other researchers and regulatory bodies to look
| into carcinogenic substances more closely to determine if
| they're worth restricting or not based on the level of
| risk they pose. IARC doesn't make recommendations to
| consumers or set standards itself. It's not meant to be a
| public-facing organization. That's honestly a problem
| with a lot of science journalism is people taking
| research that is meant for other scientists to propose
| lines of further research and add evidence to eventually
| come together into larger metanalyses, but then
| presenting these as if they are revolutionary game-
| changing findings on their own, which contributes to this
| public feeling of whiplash, as in the whole "wait, today
| eggs and coffee are bad for you, but yesterday they were
| good?" In reality, no single research project is saying
| either of those things. They're producing tiny bits of
| evidence one way or another that is meant for standards
| and recommendations bodies to aggregate and produce
| larger findings from.
|
| IARC's piece in this puzzle is to aggregate research
| showing something is a carcinogen, but this includes a
| lot of things that are harmless or even healthy in low
| doses. Sunlight, for instance, is obviously a carcinogen,
| but the amount of exposure you want is not zero. X-rays
| can cause cancer, but the optimal lifetime exposure to
| x-rays is not zero. Once IARC classifies these things,
| the purpose is to recommend to other researchers to now
| go look into these to find dose/response curves in animal
| to see what a safe and unsafe level actually is.
|
| As far as the EPA has been able to tell, glyphosate at
| the level any human would ever get exposed to from its
| use as a pesticide, is safe, even though it's a
| carcinogen. Think of like being in the same city as
| smokers exposes you to cigarette smoke in the shared air,
| but at levels nowhere near enough to meaningfully raise
| your cancer risk in spite of the fact you're regularly
| breathing in carcinogens. Living in the same room with a
| smoker is a lot worse. Actually smoking is even worse
| than that. Probably don't drink straight glyphosate on a
| regular basis.
|
| Similarly, you don't want to drink bleach, but cleaning
| your counter with bleach and then eating off of it is not
| only perfectly safe, but arguably even better than just
| eating off the counter beforehand, because bleach
| disinfects it.
| philg_jr wrote:
| Alright, now what about as an endocrine disruptor?
| cyberax wrote:
| From Europe: https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ful
| l/10.2903/j.efsa...
|
| No effects. Weak evidence shown in in-vitro studies is
| not supported by the animal experiments or statistical
| data.
| philg_jr wrote:
| The results of this study look interesting.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6413565/
| hollerith wrote:
| The IARC monograph restricts its inquiry to
| carcinogenicity whereas I am more worried about
| glyphosate's potential to impair my gut microbiome, i.e.,
| decrease the total number of microbes or decrease the
| ratio of beneficial microbes to harmful ones.
| analog31 wrote:
| Devil's advocate: I've asked a couple of farmers about
| this. The conventional wisdom is that glyphosate reduced
| the carbon footprint of farming.
|
| My own feeling is that reducing the amount of farming would
| also reduce the carbon footprint of farming. I love meat as
| much as the next person, but widespread meat consumption is
| not particularly ecological.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| _I love meat as much as the next person, but widespread
| meat consumption is not particularly ecological._
|
| Lab-grown meat is probably the quickest route forward
| that maintains normalcy whilst solving the sustainability
| issues.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, our current dietary "normalcy" is an engineered
| phenomenon to begin with, and a new one can be engineered
| just as well.
| tmitchel2 wrote:
| Could you pinpoint what exactly is not sustainable about
| eating meet though? In the UK (where I live) we eat meet
| produced mostly within the country, the livestock here
| are generally mostly fed a grass diet. Yes we should eat
| meet in moderation like anything, yes chopping down
| rainforests and building feeding lots is obvs horrific.
| But otherwise, the cattle eat the grass, they turn that
| into meet and farts, which fairly quickly come full
| circle back into the ground. No fossil fuels here. Hard
| to think of something more sustainable to me.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The farts (and burps) are a major greenhouse gas
| component. https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/war-cow-
| farts-is-stink...
| tmitchel2 wrote:
| They emit methane as a by product of eating the grass,
| it's like chucking the grass up in the air and having to
| wait approx 20 years for it to fully come back down to be
| eaten again, it's still circular, it's still fully
| sustainable. Digging up fossil oils from deep ground and
| shuving it into the atmosphere and never ever putting it
| back deep into the ground is the elephant in the room
| here.
| cyberax wrote:
| Except that there isn't enough natural grass to keep all
| the cows fed.
| bregma wrote:
| What is the delta in production between cows eating the
| grass and the same grass decomposing without the cows?
| Someone wrote:
| What feeds the grass? Chances are it partly is imported
| fertilizer (https://tradingeconomics.com/united-
| kingdom/imports-of-ferti...), and that the nitrogen in
| the fertilizer is partly washed out into the environment
| (https://www.wwf.org.uk/press-release/government-
| watchdog-fai...)
|
| Also, chances are the livestock partly is fed from
| imported food, for example in winter.
| dflock wrote:
| The UK climate is, currently, very good at growing grass.
| You can continuously graze cattle all year round in most
| of the country, as long as you rotate them between fields
| every few days. If you have enough space, by the time
| they get back round, the grass is back. The cow shit
| fertilizes the grass, and silage made on the farm does a
| lot of the winter feed top up. As long as the density
| isn't too high, it can be pretty low input.
| analog31 wrote:
| At the present time, the Haber-Bosch process sustains
| well over half of the world's animal population. This is
| what's not sustainable on a global basis, even if one
| country can do it.
|
| I saw corn fields when I visited England recently. Don't
| know the extent.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Lab grown meat is an economical dead end. Way too many
| large scale meat eaters in the US think it's fucking
| identity politics somehow, and will willingly pay more
| for "real" meat even if lab grown meat could magically
| become cheaper, which it has shown no ability to so far.
|
| The people like me, willing to eat lab grown meat,
| already are willing to pay more for more carefully grown
| meat and just eat less meat in general. We are the
| minority.
|
| The fake meat industry is currently failing. Probably
| because their products were hyper processed trash that
| was usually less palatable than a comparable meat
| replacement, not healthier in general, and somehow STILL
| more expensive than real meat.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Real meat will never go away but that doesn't mean it
| needs to be the largest fraction of meat consumption
| either.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| > and will willingly pay more for "real" meat even if lab
| grown meat could magically become cheaper,
|
| I agree with you and vouch that I am one such person. I
| am already in the middle of changing my lifestyle so that
| in some worst case scenarios I could raise my own hogs
| and cattle and slaughter them myself. Will be teaching my
| children and grandchildren to do this.
|
| "Lab grown meat" disgusts me, and though it's hard to say
| exactly how I'd behave were my ribs visible, right now I
| think I'd prefer to starve than eat it. Those who say
| they would eat it seem bizarre to me, and when I'm
| generous I just assume they haven't given it much
| thought.
|
| I do not feel as if this is tied to identity politics, I
| assume that there must be people like me both on the left
| and right, but also that there are people who would be
| enthusiastic about it on both sides as well. If I'm
| mistaken in that regard, then I must say that I have zero
| insight as to why that would be the case.
| cyberax wrote:
| Most of meat eaten is ground meat. If it doesn't taste
| any different, people won't care.
|
| Steaks are likely not going away any time soon, but they
| are not a staple food.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Despite the very large recent decreases in the price of
| lab-grown meat (I have just seen an announce about a
| company that claims that they "can now produce 100
| percent cultivated chicken (85 percent muscle and 15
| percent fat) at $11.79 per pound on a large scale"), it
| is not yet proven that lab-grown meat can be produced at
| a lower price and by consuming less resources than
| traditional meat.
|
| On the other hand, it is pretty certain that it is
| possible to produce high-quality animal proteins, like
| whey protein or egg white protein, in a sustainable way
| and at a lower cost, by cultures of genetically-modified
| fungi, which can be fed with cheap carbohydrates from
| cereals and with minerals, unlike the animal cells which
| require a very complex food.
|
| The company that has achieved the low price quoted above
| has done this by replacing the animal food that was given
| previously by everybody to the cultivated cells (e.g.
| serum and albumin) with some mixture of substances
| extracted from various vegetables.
|
| It is unlikely that it will be ever possible for the food
| given to cell cultures to be cheaper than the food given
| to real chicken. The only chance for lab-grown meat to
| become cheaper than real chicken meat is given by the
| fact that only the edible part of a chicken is grown,
| i.e. the equivalent of a breast or thigh, instead of
| growing the entire chicken body with many parts that have
| a low value.
|
| While fungal cultures would be much more efficient than
| any lab-grown meat, they could provide only protein
| powder, which could enrich in proteins any vegetable
| food, but from which it would not be easy to make
| something resembling a steak.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > by cultures of genetically-modified fungi
|
| If it's grown in a lab and tastes like meat, it's lab-
| grown meat. It doesn't matter if it uses animal cells.
|
| You may not even be able to call it "meat", it still
| makes no difference. Some people will be extremely
| offended by the difference, but if you don't force
| anything most people are always ok with anything that
| _tastes good_.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Glyphosate is mostly used for animal feed crops like field
| corn, soybeans, and alfalfa that have genetically modified
| seeds that resist glyphosate.
|
| Looks like it's used for some fruits and vegetables too,
| but it's mostly for the ones I listed above.
| smm11 wrote:
| This. Not related, but it's my belief that gluten-
| intolerance is actually a glyphosate issue.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Monsanto itself sells glyphosate-resistant plants_
|
| Do you mean DEKALB, a subsidiary of Bayer Crop Science?
| Monsanto doesn't sell anything. They closed up shop years ago
| and sold the assets to Bayer and BASF.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Monsanto didn't win because they had the most positive outlook,
| they won because they had a dominate business position, the
| most lobbying, etc. Jonathan Gressel & Stanley Culpepper, who
| the article mentions as folks who disagreed with Monsanto on
| this, have no such power to dictate things to farmers or
| congress.
| cyberax wrote:
| Monsanto won because they have a superior product, that makes
| it easier for farmers to grow crops.
|
| That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >Monsanto won because they have a superior product, that
| makes it easier for farmers to grow crops.
|
| Cheaper too and leads to better no-till practices. Despite
| all the anti-GMO FUD around it, it's just a superior way to
| farm by basically any metric you look at.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > by basically any metric you look at
|
| No, not by any metric. Area productivity is smaller, the
| plants take slightly longer growing, it creates
| dependency on a greed corporation that showed they will
| trow you under the bus if they wish...
|
| But it's cheaper.
| kickout wrote:
| Wonder if Laundando and associates lurk HN. Surely they are
| comments about carbon robotics.
| skeltoac wrote:
| Wondering whether glyphosate-resistant plants will keep their
| resistance after glyphosate is no longer being used. Will that
| vestigial trait become a liability due to some extra energy
| costs, and eventually fall back out of the gene pool?
| bell-cot wrote:
| Yes - _eventually_. The selective pressure to acquire
| resistance to a widely used herbicide is enormous. The "takes
| tiny a bit more energy" pressure to lose a useless trait is
| minimal.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Assuming the tradeoff is even energy related. Seems like the
| tradeoff could be against a whole slew of subtle things that
| apply in a diverse, natural environment, but may be less
| important in a monoculture.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| If nothing else random mutations will likely break it. But it
| would reaquire it pretty fast given selection pressure again.
| metalman wrote:
| There is no such thing as "herbicides" they are semi targeted
| biocides and are not maintaing there effectivness or targeted
| enough to prevent unacceptable "collateral" damage. Biology
| supports this as there are very few parallels to be found in
| nature for this kind of defence/offencive use of chemicals in
| multi cellular life.Which is a great big hint as to the true cost
| benifit equation over, reproductive time scales Many single
| celled life does of course use chemical deffensive/offensive
| products, yeast and various algae capable of powerfull effects on
| many life forms. Then there are venoms,but those are mechanicaly
| targeted. Nature evrn invented the "tazzer" as a
| weapon/deffence,in electric eals. Ignoring the vast and tested
| data set that is present in nature is dumb.
| azeirah wrote:
| People would take you more seriously here if you made fewer
| spelling and grammatical mistakes.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| It's extremely arrogant actually to post that incoherence and
| put the work on to us to make sense of.
| eykanal wrote:
| Can we just link directly to the story rather than through
| longreads?
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/10/10/1105034/weeds-cl...
| photochemsyn wrote:
| The weeds discussed in this article, _Amaranthus tuberculatus_
| and _Amaranthus palmeri_ , are exactly the kind of plants that
| early human cultivators would have selected as a seed crop -
| fast-growing robust plants that could be continually selected for
| maximal seed size and minimal toxin production generation after
| generation (which is how crops like maize were developed). Indeed
| members of this genus were used by Aztecs and others for just
| that purpose:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth_grain
|
| As far as maintaining fields, area spraying of pesticides and
| herbicides will be replaced with robots wielding lasers and using
| AI image recognition to catch pest infestations before they take
| over entire fields.
| staunton wrote:
| > will be replaced with robots wielding lasers
|
| That's a very confident prediction for something that sounds
| quite unlikely to me.
|
| How about biologically engineered insects/bacteria that destroy
| weeds and pests? How about pesticides which don't have the
| downsides of what's currently used?
| moritonal wrote:
| We're pretty confidently letting AI drive 2 ton metal
| vehicles on the road, and letting them fly around in the sky
| with grenades. A farmer-bot with a laser sounds pretty tame
| to me.
| shagie wrote:
| 12 years ago: Our Tractor Literally Drives Itself! (GPS
| Auto Steering Technology)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YStRc1fCj38
|
| It has a guidance system that is connected to a wheel that
| is friction attached to the steering wheel and turns it on
| an old tractor. A newer system with an old tractor -
| https://youtu.be/t0uIYjOds_o
|
| Newer tractors have this built in. The modern tractor cab
| is a mini data center. https://youtu.be/ZhOvchjeqgM (and
| you can see that he's not touching the wheel most of the
| time)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Read the article you are commenting on, these alternatives
| are mentioned.
|
| Laser wielding AI robots already exist, and are being used
| commercially.
| Qworg wrote:
| If you'd like to see a successful one at scale:
| https://carbonrobotics.com/
| margalabargala wrote:
| Laser-wielding robots are already being successfully deployed
| to combat weeds at scale on farms across the US.
|
| > How about biologically engineered insects/bacteria that
| destroy weeds and pests? How about pesticides which don't
| have the downsides of what's currently used?
|
| Aside from these not currently existing, they also have far
| worse failure modes than robots with lasers. Introducing
| species for biological control methods have a long and
| storied history of becoming a problem as bad as or worse than
| the original problem.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The article does note that this may similarly cause plants
| to fight back. Nothing so cool as mirrored weeds, but...
|
| > It's not just chemicals. Weeds can become resistant to
| any type of control method. In a classic example from
| China, a weed called barnyard grass evolved over centuries
| to resemble rice and thus evade hand weeding.
| shagie wrote:
| Weed lasers in Idaho - https://youtu.be/lWTDwj1y9Xg
| wlesieutre wrote:
| https://carbonrobotics.com/autonomous-weeder
|
| https://carbonrobotics.com/laserweeder
| user432678 wrote:
| I wonder how soon new Amaranth species would evolve since ML
| models are not 100% precise and genetic mutations of a leaf
| shape would carry on eventually mimicking useful crops?
| goda90 wrote:
| It already happens with human vision:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vavilovian_mimicry
| fuzztester wrote:
| Some Amaranthus species are used in India too, as foods. The
| grains are used to make laddus (sweet balls made by mixing the
| grains which sugar or jaggery) and the leaves are eaten as
| cooked greens with spices, masala, onions, etc. Both are quite
| tasty.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=rajgira
| greenie_beans wrote:
| would be crazy if ai can stop septoria blight on my tomatoes.
| highly doubt that will ever happen in my lifetime.
| buildsjets wrote:
| I've been using strong vinegar for weed control on my property
| for a few years now. You do have to be careful about applying it
| and watch the over-spray because it is not a targeted herbicide
| like Roundup, it's going to kill grass and broadleaf plants
| alike. Sometimes I lay down a tarp to mask off the grass border,
| for example. But if you have a general weedy area that just needs
| to be knocked down, or a gravel path/driveway to keep clear, I
| have found it is just as effective, quick-acting, and long-
| lasting as the synthetic herbicides, with the side effect of
| smelling like salad dressing, instead of smelling like cancer.
|
| I buy 30-45% concentrate depending on what is on sale, and dilute
| to around 10% for new weeds and 20% for full grown weeds. A
| little dish soap in there helps it wet down the leaves. For lawn
| weeds, once they are under control, I've been able to keep up
| with a 1/4 acre lawn with just manual weeding. Good tools help, I
| have tried a lot of weed pulling gadgets. Using a push mower
| means I go slow enough to spot them, and if they get too big they
| jam the mower so I am motivated to pull them while they are still
| small.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Curious person here with a warning: don't smell 30% vinegar.
| You are missing nothing gods by skipping this. I promise.
| yumraj wrote:
| I hope you know that this'll make more people want to smell
| it, not less. ;)
|
| At least I'm curious now..
| ridgeguy wrote:
| An olfactory Streisand Effect!
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's ok to be curious. Just don't do it.
|
| People have been avoiding learning the smell and taste of
| several kinds of poison with a great amount of success for
| thousands of years. Be one of the successful ones.
| dvh wrote:
| In great Czech movie "Obecna skola" (The elementary school,
| 1991) principal warns students over PA not to lick metal
| railings in winter and of course students try it and get
| stuck. He complains about it to a new teacher who responds
| "Students are young, they want to try everything".
| Principal then asks "are you telling me, if I say - Don't
| drink sulphuric acid, it will burn your intestines - that
| they will drink it?" And the teacher says: "I don't know,
| but better not say anything over PA".
| singleshot_ wrote:
| I'm thrilled to be part of a community which is so curious
| and so distrusting of authority.
| chankstein38 wrote:
| Absolutely my first thought was "Huh, I wonder what it
| smells like"
| singleshot_ wrote:
| It smells exactly like acetic acid, only a lot stronger
| than you're used to.
|
| You may find after a few tries that it smells just like
| the split second before vomiting.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Yup, my neighbor uses strong vinegar to kill weeds and our
| yard smells strongly of vinegar for about 12 hours after. He
| does this 2x/week. I'm glad we're moving.
| kyleee wrote:
| Better than bathing the land in poison. You never know with
| moving, you may look back fondly on this current neighbor
| depending on the proclivities of your new neighbors
| jemmyw wrote:
| I've used the same, and it seems just as, if not more,
| effective than the roundup available from the garden centre.
|
| The only problem is that vinegar destroys spray machines. Even
| though I rinse through after every use.
| devilbunny wrote:
| Have you tried running some baking soda (sodium bicarbonate,
| NaHCO3) dissolved in water through it after each use?
| RaftPeople wrote:
| The other option is boiling water, I've used it and it's very
| effective.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Another vote for this, especially on pathways and between
| bricks etc.
| ssttoo wrote:
| Salt too. I saw professionals use salt during a trip recently
| and looked it up and tried it. My driveway cracks are devoid
| of life now.
| kleiba wrote:
| That's interesting that many people here seem to have had good
| experience with using vinegar. I tried it once with some weeds
| growing in the cracks of my front entry brick path, and it
| didn't really work for me.
| dimator wrote:
| Meta: I love hearing about people that take pride and care of
| their lawns/gardens.
| pvaldes wrote:
| In an area of the lawn we needed to bury a pipeline. Soil was
| removed and I designed an Iris bed with stones. Weeds soon
| invited themselves to the composition. The rigid leaves of the
| Irises are now mixed with serrate leaves of Mercurialis, soft
| tones of Stellaria and rounded Umbilicus. I like the result, so
| I will tolerate it, for now.
|
| Just today, in that area, two silvery eyes where looking at me.
| They weren't followed with an animal face or body. Just a weed
| background, like if an invisible master of mimicry were hiding
| at plain sight. But if was not an animal, it was a weed. A weed
| with eyes. True history. The world is full of surprises.
|
| The deploying leafets of an Aquilegia created perfectly
| symmetrical cups at each side of the stem. Sit in the cups, two
| identical balls of pure dew looking at me like a baby. It was
| just a seedling in a crevice when I picked it by a tiny leaf
| and found a new home for the poor thing. Today it rewarded me
| with some magical seconds for that.
|
| I would loathe having a garden that smells like vinegar and
| melted rotten leaves. Things don't need to be like this. There
| is a lot of fun waiting in the unplanned and untamed.
| danielodievich wrote:
| My long-departed grandmother lived her entire life in Grodno, a
| city in western Belarus on Nieman river. It is a lovely and
| fertile region with well defined seasons of the year. All kinds
| of things grow there, mostly temperate weather crops, potatoes,
| tomatoes, peas, cucumbers, carrots, radishes, cabbages, apples,
| pears etc. Grandmother was a big believer in child labor so my
| summer was spent weeding every day. Her herbicide/pesticide were
| little children hands. I think vinegar was involved too. I think
| though if she could afford chemicals she would have. Ugh, if I
| never have to squish colorado potato beetle larvae from the
| potato leaf, I'll be happy.
| navark wrote:
| I have an acre of forest and I spend time removing invasive
| species like buckthorn and wild mustard to keep the forest
| healthy. It can be really challenging to discriminate between
| native and invasive plants without a lot of experience and plant
| identifying apps like iNaturalist. I would love to be able to
| sweep my phone around and have it highlight invasive plants live.
| Is anyone working on something like this? The technology already
| works in images of a single plant, I just need to identify
| multiple plants in one frame, and ideally live video.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| What a brilliant idea!
|
| To Xcode i go!
|
| And I now have an excuse for a new M4 Mac mini.
|
| You're a genius Navark!
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Haha I hope you're serious. Looking forward to the Show HN
| soon.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I already have a path forward, boy some of these ML and
| vision apis are incredible. What a force multiplier it is
| being able to piggy back on a multi trillion dollar corps
| work! :)
| sgt101 wrote:
| Yeah - be a little careful there.
|
| I've been playing with llama-3.2vision-11b and it can't
| count more than 4 dots.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I'm not using an LLM I'm using apples vision frameworks.
|
| Which makes way more sense to me as this needs to run on
| device.
| navark wrote:
| I am looking forward to your attempt!
| bluerooibos wrote:
| This would be awesome - live video stream with some ChatGPT
| voice commentary on what you're seeing, though I imagine this
| won't be super simple...
|
| You could also extend it to just tell you the fauna and
| species of grass in your field etc. I've been looking at
| mapping a field at my home before starting a permaculture
| project on it, so a tool like this would be super useful.
| Image upload would be fine instead of a live video.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i have a similar situation and have found it's better to learn
| how to do this with my own brain rather than outsource it to
| technology. i wish the tech could do this, but so many times my
| own knowledge has proven superior. i especially think it's
| important to learn these skills if you spend time managing a
| forest. if you spend enough time managing land you'll find that
| identifying invasive plants quickly is second nature without an
| app...almost like it's in our dna...
|
| here's a recent example: i was hiking somewhere with no cell
| service. a plant caught my eye. i thought, "that looks like a
| nightshade but i've never seen it before". i went home and
| looked up different types of nightshades. it was a nightshade,
| so now i learned a new plant and reinforced my knowledge of
| nightshades.
| mschild wrote:
| Doesn't iNaturalist provide an app called Seek that does
| exactly that? I remember using it in the past to scan plants
| and it would clarify them for you as best as it could.
| r14c wrote:
| Weeds have a function which does run opposite to the objectives
| of monoculture, but I'd probably put my money on millions of
| years of evolution over the needs of industrial farmers.
| Permaculture and "food forest" methodologies are not as good for
| anyone's profit margin, but they are more resilient and lean on
| natural processes of ecological niche development instead of
| fighting them.
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| > As crude a weapon as the cave man's club, the chemical barrage
| has been hurled against the fabric of life - a fabric on the one
| hand delicate and destructible, on the other miraculously tough
| and resilient, and _capable of striking back in unexpected ways_.
| These extraordinary capacities of life have been ignored by the
| practitioners of chemical control who have brought to their task
| no "high-minded orientation," no humility before the vast forces
| with which they tamper.
|
| -- R. L. Carson
| binrec wrote:
| > Populations of the weeds have been found that are impervious to
| nine different classes of herbicides. The plant can grow more
| than two inches a day to reach eight feet in height and dominate
| entire fields. Originally from the desert Southwest, it boasts a
| sturdy root system and can withstand droughts.
|
| Well, I'm sold. Where do I buy Palmer amaranth? What about water
| hemp - is it edible?
| jaggederest wrote:
| > The leaves, stems and seeds of Palmer amaranth, like those of
| other amaranths, are edible and highly nutritious.
|
| Waterhemp is also an Amaranthus species and thus most probably
| highly edible, though I have no idea if it's palatable.
| pvaldes wrote:
| People will need to accept that the idea of feeding humans with
| an endless soy field does not lead to a stable system and that
| the cycle of poison is a dead end.
|
| Weeds are creatures more misunderstood than evil. We should be
| able to find an use for something that grows fast, digs deep
| breaking the soil, moves nutrients from deep layers and can live
| without water. Seems created to feed it to cattle and make humans
| happy.
| mschild wrote:
| I agree. We've recently purchased a house with a sizeable
| garden. Our plan is to let it run itself for the most part. We
| did remove invasive or too aggressive plants though.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| I think the future of pesticides and weed control in food
| production will be robots manually removing pests. No chemicals
| required.
|
| The technology we have today isn't too far off from this... weeds
| are certainly easier than bugs, but both should be feasible.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i'm curious if you garden or have ever worked on a farm?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| a lot of weeds can be controlled by no-till methods. weeds mostly
| happen when the soil is bare.
| molave wrote:
| Life finds a way
| dskrvk wrote:
| Bruce Sterling's "Heavy Weather" describes (offhandedly) a post-
| agricultural ecosystem where only herbicide/cold/heat-resistant
| weeds remain. People then breed genetically-engineered livestock
| that can convert the weeds into more useful substances.
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