News

Farmers look 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.

“We looked at two situations here, a $40,000 robot and a $20,000 robot,” he explains. “And as you would 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 if we don’t have any alternative and we keep losing the efficacy of chemical control, that’s going to lead to crop losses that can reach up to $100 billion per year,” he says.

Attallah recently developed an integrated weed ecological and economic dynamic (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.

“Initially it’s going to have lower profits because it’s investing in the robots earlier on, but you could see how eventually it’s going to lead to higher profits and that is going to lead to much lower resistance dynamics under long-term management,” he explains.

He says farmers who emphasized weed management for the future were more likely to adopt the technology sooner but would still mix robotic use and herbicide management.

Attallah presented his research during this week’s I-FARM University Learning Series.