Herbicides have a long history of negative consequences. Glyphosate and paraquat, among other pollutants, are extremely harmful to human health and the environment. These pollutants impair soil quality and destroy beneficial organisms such as pollinators. Furthermore, the widespread use of herbicides has resulted in weed resistance, making chemical management less effective.
Kenny Lee, co-founder and CEO of Aigen Robotics, is personally committed to reducing pesticide use. Lee, a glyphosate-related non-Hodgkin lymphoma survivor, has collected $19 million for his startup to produce solar-powered weeding robots. “We’re on a personal mission,” Lee says, emphasizing their dedication to sustainable agriculture.
This, like most technical innovations in farming, has the problem that most farms are extremely cash/investment starved.
Basically anything that primarily benefits small farms and the environment doesn’t give sufficient return of investment for farmers to be able to borrow money for it, and they themselves have all their assets already fixed in expensive other farm equipment.
So the only ones that can benefit from this are the huge industrial farms with big corporate owners, and their (only) interest is to use it to cut labour costs.
It’s like any technology we can dream of would still not solve the problem of the current system. It’s so disheartening seeing apparent solutions gatekept by capital interests