Just to tie this back to the more common HN topics (don't get me wrong, this is an extremely important story both for scientific and cultural (attack on science) reasons):
The reason we use pesticides and weed killers is mainly to reduce the labor input. Once we have cheap, non-fossil-fueled agricultural robots, then a large percentage of our food plant production can be cheap and, by today's standards, "organic" (perhaps better since organic farms can use different pesticides).
I spent some time kicking around an ag robot startup idea. Farmers have low margins and tend to be conservative, but the successful ones† are all spreadsheet jockeys who are much more comfortable than those in other sectors to swap op ex for cap ex. And in the usual B2B the killer ROI is within a year. In Ag it's within 10 years. Not an easy market technically but on the business side pretty straighforward.
It's not a panacea; not all pests are amenable to mechanical (hand or machine) removal (e.g. phylloxera) and the Haber-Bosch process will still be important, but a HUGE reduction in chemical application is very likely. And with robots, no-till and other soil-saving processes can become economically valuable in the short term (NT has always been valuable in the long term, but people don't live/think on that time scale).
† which is all of them today in the US, and to a great degree in Europe; the unsuccessful ones were long since bought out
I really wish it worked that way; but agriculture still has a number of scarce resources (namely land and water) that will require the adoption of productivity-increasing tools to boost the productivity of a given plot of land or to increase efficiency of water use.
> I really wish it worked that way; but agriculture still has a number of scarce resources (namely land and water) that will require the adoption of productivity-increasing tools to boost the productivity of a given plot of land or to increase efficiency of water use.
What you say is not incompatible with my assertion. Labor is a productivity-increasing tool. If you weed and prune your yield goes up. If you water (but not too much) yield goes up. If you remove pests, yield goes up. Etc. Those are all labor-intensive, so if it's cheaper to use a machine or chemical to do it, you do. And in fact robots are likely to be able to individually water plants more efficiently than either a human or a standard irrigation system. Which people will do if it is cheaper than current irrigation (flood, or drip primarily today, depending on crop and conditions).
Sure, I believe fertilizers will still be needed and some other chemicals as well. But many of these pesticides and herbicides have "unfortunate" side effects (e.g. destruction of the rhizome) which also reduce productivity so avoiding them has a double benefit.
And note that there is some evidence that artificial fertilization and overwatering may be reducing the nutritional value of grasses (think of it as "the same number of nutrients divided by a larger amount of plant matter". The mechanism, if real, is more complex, but that's an analogy).
‡ I don't mean productivity in the macroeconomic definition of "economic output per labor hour" but in the sense you used it: "economic output per unit area"
Hmmm... no -- labor input reduction is a benefit, sure - but I am under the impression that we use many of these to protect yield, which has been sought to be increased through the use of other petrochems.
we will still use pesticides and weed killers when fully automated harvesting/tending is a thing to still protect yield.
what will ostensibly (and monsanto has been actively doing this - SPECIFICALLY with their Roundup-immune plants) is to engineer plants that can thrive with their yields when doused in poison.
And this is the problem with Monsanto - "fuck the cancer the humans will get - make sure that corn plant is like octomom!"
GMOs are GMOs not because they add to nutrition and health of humans. They are GMOs because they add greater yield to the profits.
Then you GMO the patented seed market and then you control the entirety of humanity.
Three things humans need:
Food, water, energy.
Monsanto, Nestle, Exxon.
They literally are seeking to control those respective areas - and thus, humanity.
> Hmmm... no -- labor input reduction is a benefit, sure - but I am under the impression that we use many of these to protect yield, which has been sought to be increased through the use of other petrochems.
>we will still use pesticides and weed killers when fully automated harvesting/tending is a thing to still protect yield.
I think you might misunderstand how agriculture works.
For thousands of years people manually pruned, watered and removed animal and vegetable pests from plants. The use of chemical pesticides (against bugs etc) and herbicides (against nonproductive plants that consume resources i.e. weeds) reduced the labor input immensely and increased yield both of which increased the total economic value.
The best way to think of a modern farm is as a factory; the manager is always looking at ways of reducing inputs. Nobody uses these chemicals for fun.
Robots should be weeding, removing insects, and all that other drudgery because it's a never-ending struggle that's essential to good yields, but also so time-consuming we'd go bankrupt paying living wages to people tweezing every bug off of every plant.
The reason we use pesticides and weed killers is mainly to reduce the labor input. Once we have cheap, non-fossil-fueled agricultural robots, then a large percentage of our food plant production can be cheap and, by today's standards, "organic" (perhaps better since organic farms can use different pesticides).
I spent some time kicking around an ag robot startup idea. Farmers have low margins and tend to be conservative, but the successful ones† are all spreadsheet jockeys who are much more comfortable than those in other sectors to swap op ex for cap ex. And in the usual B2B the killer ROI is within a year. In Ag it's within 10 years. Not an easy market technically but on the business side pretty straighforward.
It's not a panacea; not all pests are amenable to mechanical (hand or machine) removal (e.g. phylloxera) and the Haber-Bosch process will still be important, but a HUGE reduction in chemical application is very likely. And with robots, no-till and other soil-saving processes can become economically valuable in the short term (NT has always been valuable in the long term, but people don't live/think on that time scale).
† which is all of them today in the US, and to a great degree in Europe; the unsuccessful ones were long since bought out