Well, I'm a full time small scale farmer. My goal is to produce a surplus of food so that others can perform other tasks in society and make a living wage for myself and family. I also aim to have employees some day, none of these things are possible growing the way you have described. If everyone grew the way you do, there would be no surplus because it is so time intensive/laborious
Toda ocurrencia nueva, es un inmenso placer, todo el mundo debería disfrutar de ello.. Hay un inconveniente de sobra sabido, es el idioma. No sé si algún día, se llegará a traducir al idioma de cada país sería un buen adelanto. La risa cura, y se debería promulgar, con las imágenes ya es bastante, pero si al mismo tiempo se entendiera lo que dicen los protagonistas, entonces sería subliminal. Es mi opinión.
I don't care how you grow your crops, if it works for you that's fine. At one point in my life I wanted to do what you do.. then I realized I wanted to farm for a living and make more than a sub-poverty wage. Mechanization (while still growing organically) is the way to achieve this. If you just have the living mulch between rows, what do you do to prepare your bed to plant? I add OM to the soil by cover cropping, just not a permanent crop between the rows.
Nice one, certainly a move towards sustainability. Curious as to why you're machine is so big though, usually the hand weeders are smaller [and lighter]?
This machine is used to disturb the soil and uproot and expose recently germinated weeds to the sun. It is a very effective method of weeding if done at the right time.
Hehe 30 years is along time, by that time we would have ascended :) Robotic automation would be a great boon for organic farmers and small gardeners, no need for pesticides just have Robby the robot pick off caterpillars 24/7..
Am I the only one wondering why they are using a weed-free onion crop to test a weeding machine? Shouldn't there be some weeds in the rows for an accurate test? These onions already look clean to me.
From what I can tell, it doesn't seem to be doing anything. It doesn't appear there are even any weeds. lol Maybe they are tiny weeds, and if so, it would be cool if you did this again, and mounted a small camera right next to the weeding mechanism.
+UraniumMan The weeds were indeed quite small (best for high efficacy control with minimal disturbance); some good views of them around 5:18-5:37. The researcher i produced these clips for has recently been working with GoPro footage and is aiming to do just that. Keep an eye on zeroseedrain
To the people arguing the efficiency of human power.... A 190 lb. person riding a bike at about 11mph will burn just around 38 calories per mile (livestrong.com). A moped with a fuel efficiency of 100 mpg will burn about 310 calories of fuel to perform the same task (about 31,000 cal. in a gallon of gasoline). That human on a bike is 8.15 times more fuel efficient than that moped. In order to make a vehicle with comparable efficiency to a human riding a bike, that vehicle would need to approach 815 mpg...
Have farms consider robotic weed control? An automated robot can patrol the fields and kill the weeds perhaps using a specifically design tool. Robots are not that uncommon these days, think of it like a weed killing Roomba..
DrewDubious- it sounds like you have never farmed for a living before. Living mulches, inter-cropping, etc are highly inefficient Any machine that can lower the amount of time you have to spend weeding is more cash in your pocket. That makes obvious sense to any farmer, but I guess not to you. How are you supposed to plant onions into a living mulch? I planted 15000 onions by hand this spring (into an area tilled by tractor). I never could have done that if the area was covered by a living mulch
Well... i grow on over 10 times as much land as you by myself. In the next year or so once I am better mechanized with cultivating tractors I will be able to grow on 50-100 times the amount of land as you do... by myself, more with employees. If i grew like you I couldn't afford employees because that method of growing is so inefficient. I would guess growing as you do one might generate 3-4 dollars/hr of of income, thus a losing proposition if I have employees who make 10 dollars/hr
pilgrims all. this idea wont last long. Too much labor, hard to control. add an engine and ride. Try a small tractor. do more sooner, and have it to do other jobs.
