To be clear, weed control is not the only thing that makes organic farming expensive, but it certanly is a factor.
Kalberweidli is an organic (Bio), grass fed beef farm located in central Switzerland.
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the plants that we're pulling are called blocking at least in German in English they're called bitter Dock and I think there's some other names as well but it doesn't really matter it's a weed that's native to Europe but it's an invasive species and it can be found all over the world now some people actually eat these leaves it's not some sort of evil plant but the problem is cows really don't like them and if you just leave them alone they spread like crazy and just take over your whole field because they spread so fast and they have really large leaves they crowd out all of the grass meaning there's less grass for your animals to eat making your Fields much less efficient there are many other weeds like thistles that farmers deal with as well but in this area blocking is especially difficult to control the plants have really long roots that store a lot of its energy these roots can survive without leaves for several years so even if you mow them over and over again they just grow back to get rid of the plant you have to dig up all of the roots and this is a real pain so I don't know why you'd call this thing in English but um it's a weed puller so the idea is you drive it into the ground and the idea is to put the root of the wheat in the v-shaped Notch and then pull it up you want to get as much of the root ideally all of the root as possible so the plant doesn't regrow
foreign
just like that to get rid of the plant you have to dig up all of its roots that is of course unless you're using herbicides herbicides are chemicals that are used to kill plants and they're by far the most efficient way of controlling weeds but as I'm sure you already know they're also quite controversial now is an organic farm meaning there are no man-made chemicals that are used for the animals or the plants so we don't use herbicides for an organic farmer really the only option is to pull them up by hand this is incredibly time consuming and time is expensive we could spend all summer pulling weeds and still not get them all and if you're an Organic Crop farmer it's even worse imagine hand pulling all of the weeds in a huge field like this in a relatively short period of time farming technology has come a really long ways but it seems like Tech technology to deal with weeds without herbicides has kind of been left behind herbicides are just so effective at killing weeds there's just not really a need for other technology at least they have been so effective there's a growing problem around the world and that's herbicide resistance basically over time weeds are becoming more resistant to herbicides and the herbicides aren't working as well now there are multiple types of herbicides as one becomes no longer effective to keep weeds under control the farmer has to switch to another herbicide
12 авг 2023
