Sujet : Re: Laser weeders?!
De : dtravel (at) *nospam* sonic.net (Dimensional Traveler)
Groupes : rec.arts.sf.writtenDate : 01. Jul 2025, 02:02:53
Autres entêtes
Organisation : A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID : <103vc3q$2fcph$2@dont-email.me>
References : 1 2 3 4 5
User-Agent : Mozilla Thunderbird
On 6/30/2025 9:38 AM, Scott Lurndal wrote:
kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:
Joy Beeson <jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Jun 2025 17:31:21 -0400, Ahasuerus
<ahasuerus@email.com> wrote:
>
On 6/26/2025 8:56 AM, Tony Nance wrote:
>
What could go wrong?
>
[snip] identify weeds with onboard computers and then kill them
with a laser. …
>
As Robert Sheckley's "Watchbird" (1953,
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?46236) suggested, the
interesting question will be "How do you define 'weeds'?"
>
Any plant that isn't a soybean -- or whatever else you are
monoculturing.
>
What we need is some way to teach goats not to eat soybeans. Then we
might have something.
--scott
My grandfather (b. 1903) grew soybeans. He was what today would be called
an organic farmer - he didn't use herbicides (or fertilizers - he preferred
crop rotation using alfalfa to replenish N2 in the soil).
That meant us kids spent summers walking the beanfields with a curved corn
knife, whacking ragweed, lambs quarters and other undesirable growths.
Can't say it was fun. Trained goats would be preferred - although today, robotics
would likely be a more productive path to take.
https://farm.bot/
Goats would be cheaper I suspect.
-- I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky dirty old man.