Latest news with #LaserWeeder
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Will AI and robots replace farmworkers in Arizona? Growers experiment with new technology
GOODYEAR — A sizzling sound and a charred smell wafted from the rows of crops at Duncan Family Farm west of Phoenix. On the flattened planting bed, by the side of arugula seedlings smaller than a fingernail, the weeding machine moved forward, sparking a constellation of little fires. Twenty feet wide, weighing nearly five tons, the LaserWeeder is trained with a data set of tens of millions of images to tell a crop plant from a weed. It kills the weeds with lasers, the tiny sparks and sizzle erupting from purslane catching fire. The machine is one of many investments made by large-scale leafy green and vegetable growers in Arizona, both conventional and organic, to reduce labor costs and improve operations. Yuma, where much of the nation's winter vegetables are harvested, has a front row to the expanding ag tech market. While the technology is expensive, proponents say automation will help U.S. farms stay ahead in the market. 'The only way you can really compete when you are talking about $20 an hour versus $4, is automation,' said Walter Duflock, vice president of innovation at Western Growers, comparing top farm wages for H2-A visa holders in the U.S. versus wages in Mexico. With laser weeding, there's less chance that Duncan Family Farms, one of the leading organic growers in the country, will have to send a 20-person crew to walk the rows and weed by hoe later in the season. The artificial intelligence technology is especially beneficial for high-density crops like arugula, spinach, onions and carrots. Not all improvements involve new tech, and human labor is far from being dispensable. In many cases, investments go into fine-tuning the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, increasing yields and making agriculture more precise. On their newest micro-greens operation, Duncan Family Farms added an automated seeder and harvester, which didn't eliminate jobs but increased consistency, eliminated work hazards and freed up work hours so employees can attend to other tasks. That tech isn't as "glittery" as the laser weeder, but it was transformative, said Courtney Boyer, supply chain manager for Duncan Family Farms. One of the barriers to automation is that the newest technologies haven't been widely tested. "We're trying to make slow, educated decisions," she said. "The (tech) companies, a lot of them are startups, there is a chance they might fail. It's just such a severe cost if something goes obsolete or hasn't been proven enough." That's one of the reasons why, late last year, the Yuma Center for Excellence in Desert Agriculture, a donor-funded branch of the University of Arizona, opened a 'wireless farm' to serve as a test bed for agricultural tech companies, which can then troubleshoot and showcase their products to growers. The project goes hand in hand with recently acquired county-wide connectivity from a high-speed fiber optic network, and the upcoming installation of 27 towers to get broadband to farms, said Connor Osgood, the center's AgTech research manager. 'We're not building it for today's technology, we are building it for tomorrow's technology,' he said, 'and we have no idea what that's going to look like.' Ag tech: Keeping salt out of crops requires more water. A new app can help farmers decide how much Matt McGuire bought his first lettuce thinner in 2013, back when they were rare to nonexistent in Yuma. A tractor attachment with sensors, camera vision and nozzles sprayed fertilizer, acids or herbicides with precise accuracy on overcrowded rows of lettuce. Until then, thinning, removing some lettuce plants to improve the growth of one, was done exclusively by workers using a hoe. Today, virtually every Yuma farm uses thinning machines to some degree. Those who don't own a thinner lease it or hire services. Like all new technology, it went through several generations of refinement. The first machine 'went out to the scrap pile after about three years,' said McGuire, chief agricultural officer of JV Smith Companies, which grows around 8,000 acres of veggies and greens in Arizona. Now, he owns version four of the thinner developed by Agmechtronix, a New Mexico company that about 13 years ago designed the machine specifically for Yuma lettuce growers, said Agmechtronix owner Ryan Herbon. Multiple new players have jumped into the market of automation and cutting-edge technology since then, with company giants like John Deere buying startups for nine-digit sums. Western Growers, representing fresh produce farmers in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, launched an initiative to automate 50% of fresh produce activity by 2031. The market is already responding to that trend, and competition is growing fast among developers. 'We are talking about half a billion dollars of equipment sales in a large region over 2.5 years,' said Duflock, with Western Growers. Agriculture was an 'ideal opportunity and uncrowded market space' back in 2017 when Hylio decided to build drones specifically for spraying, fertilizing and scanning crops, said co-founder Arthur Erickson. The company has sold three drones in Arizona in the past two years, and hundreds more in other states. Recent changes in Federal Aviation Administration regulations, allowing drones of 55 pounds or more to fly under certain waivers, also helped that market grow. Hylio's biggest drone weighs 470 pounds when fully loaded and ready to take flight. To operate these systems efficiently, farms need connectivity. AI-driven technology takes a lot of data and a lot of bandwidth, and because many places in rural U.S. still lack broadband, tech companies found a workaround so farmers and service providers can collect data from the machine, then drive out of the farm to where they can upload it. In Yuma County, that technology would have a real-time response. Last month, with $6 million awarded under the American Rescue Plan Act, the county board of supervisors approved the installation of broadband towers to serve 180,000 acres of farmland, which could make a network of devices, software and cloud systems run smoothly. The "real holy grail," McGuire said, would be if farmers could run soil sensors on a tractor, measuring nutrients in real time and mapping the field by one-inch increments, and tie that data to a fertilizer injector in the back, which would deliver the "prescription." An automated thinner in which cameras assess plant health would send that information to a secondary spray system with fertilizer. Years ahead, there could be 'swarms' of automated technology working farmland in the same space, at the same time, ventured Osgood, the research manager at YCEDA. Yuma is the ideal testing site for these technologies, Osgood said. The area has "tightly choreographed" year-round crop production and extreme heat conditions, which provide both logistical and operational challenges. The various soil types and crops grown in the area also give companies diversity for their tests. 'If it works here, it'll work anywhere,' he said. H-2A visas: Growers' reliance on farmworker visa program has soared. Its future under Trump is unclear Proponents of automation in agriculture say it can address labor shortage challenges, increase yields, save money on fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and reduce some environmental impacts. Instead of spraying by aircraft, JV Farms now relies mostly on drones. The technology is quiet and reduces off-site drift — when sprayed chemicals move beyond the farm — because it has the control to fly to the edge of the field, stop, and turn around. "I don't get phone calls at two in the morning for planes flying over," said McGuire about the drones' perks. Like with the aircraft sprays, drones also fly at night to avoid exposing crews to the chemicals, he explained. The greatest advertisement for automation, however, is still that it reduces labor costs. As migrants who have worked in the agricultural industry for decades grow older and border enforcement toughens, growers have increasingly turned to an expensive visa program known as H-2A. Using a thinner, one operator can do the work of 45 people, estimated McGuire. For JV Farms, that technology adoption meant that in four years, they went from hiring 22 farmworker crews to eight. There are two kinds of technology: labor-augmenting and labor-replacing. The first is complementary to the effort of farmworkers; the second substitutes machines for human labor. The first one is currently more common in agriculture, but the landscape is changing. Nearly half of the respondents of a 2022 Western Growers survey said they'd be increasing their spending on automation anywhere between 10% to 50% over the next three years. Nearly a third of respondents expected to spend over 50% extra. Eliminating jobs with automation is not exclusive to the agricultural industry, but it carries similar moral dilemmas. Businesses improve their bottom line, while many livelihoods can be compromised. That is particularly true of farmworkers who have some of the weakest labor protections in the U.S. and often have limited job mobility. "The technology is morally neutral," said Antonio de Loera, communications director for United Farm Workers. "The question is, how is it deployed? Is it used to dispose of workers? "On the flip side, you could see a world where technological progress allows these jobs to be safer and more dignified." In the past, automation has also led to industry consolidation. In the 1960s, tech companies released a commercial tomato harvester for California's cannery industry and a tomato variety engineered to withstand mechanical picking. The transition eliminated tens of thousands of farmworker jobs and reduced the number of tomato farmers in California by 82% in five years. Four companies held nearly full control of the market. Depending on who is at the table, de Loera said, "the technology will be deployed only with their interest and bottom line in mind." In Goodyear, around a small automated seeder, six women worked in a tiny assembly line. Two moistened and turned over a big pile of soil substrate and fed it into the machine; others lined and inspected the trays on the belt, and piled them after trays had been evenly seeded and watered. Preparing micro-green trays is now done three to four times faster than the rudimentary process when employees had to seed trays by hand. It has increased yields and resulted in a more consistent product. Months later, Duncan Family Farms bought a microgreen harvester, so after the trays had produced tender leaves in the greenhouse, they could be evenly cut by the machine and dumped into shipping boxes. That last change also meant that now the six employees don't have to use knives to cut 3-inch plants. The whole process of taking care of microgreen production is like running a daycare, said Patricia Guzman, assistant supervisor for the crew. Coriander, kale, cabbage, arugula and radishes take a maximum of 20 days from seeding to harvest, and under the high-humidity conditions of the greenhouse and the dense planting, can catch mold if not inspected. A spot of decay can contaminate a line of microgreens. The whole operation is reliant on them being watchful, Guzman said. "(The machines) streamline the process, but could never fully replace human work." Clara Migoya covers agriculture and water issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Reach her at This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona farmers experiment with AI to improve crop harvests
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Will AI and robots replace farmworkers in Arizona? Growers experiment with new technology
GOODYEAR — A sizzling sound and a charred smell wafted from the rows of crops at Duncan Family Farm west of Phoenix. On the flattened planting bed, by the side of arugula seedlings smaller than a fingernail, the weeding machine moved forward, sparking a constellation of little fires. Twenty feet wide, weighing nearly five tons, the LaserWeeder is trained with a data set of tens of millions of images to tell a crop plant from a weed. It kills the weeds with lasers, the tiny sparks and sizzle erupting from purslane catching fire. The machine is one of many investments made by large-scale leafy green and vegetable growers in Arizona, both conventional and organic, to reduce labor costs and improve operations. Yuma, where much of the nation's winter vegetables are harvested, has a front row to the expanding ag tech market. While the technology is expensive, proponents say automation will help U.S. farms stay ahead in the market. 'The only way you can really compete when you are talking about $20 an hour versus $4, is automation,' said Walter Duflock, vice president of innovation at Western Growers, comparing top farm wages for H2-A visa holders in the U.S. versus wages in Mexico. With laser weeding, there's less chance that Duncan Family Farms, one of the leading organic growers in the country, will have to send a 20-person crew to walk the rows and weed by hoe later in the season. The artificial intelligence technology is especially beneficial for high-density crops like arugula, spinach, onions and carrots. Not all improvements involve new tech, and human labor is far from being dispensable. In many cases, investments go into fine-tuning the use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, increasing yields and making agriculture more precise. On their newest micro-greens operation, Duncan Family Farms added an automated seeder and harvester, which didn't eliminate jobs but increased consistency, eliminated work hazards and freed up work hours so employees can attend to other tasks. That tech isn't as "glittery" as the laser weeder, but it was transformative, said Courtney Boyer, supply chain manager for Duncan Family Farms. One of the barriers to automation is that the newest technologies haven't been widely tested. "We're trying to make slow, educated decisions," she said. "The (tech) companies, a lot of them are startups, there is a chance they might fail. It's just such a severe cost if something goes obsolete or hasn't been proven enough." That's one of the reasons why, late last year, the Yuma Center for Excellence in Desert Agriculture, a donor-funded branch of the University of Arizona, opened a 'wireless farm' to serve as a test bed for agricultural tech companies, which can then troubleshoot and showcase their products to growers. The project goes hand in hand with recently acquired county-wide connectivity from a high-speed fiber optic network, and the upcoming installation of 27 towers to get broadband to farms, said Connor Osgood, the center's AgTech research manager. 'We're not building it for today's technology, we are building it for tomorrow's technology,' he said, 'and we have no idea what that's going to look like.' Ag tech: Keeping salt out of crops requires more water. A new app can help farmers decide how much Matt McGuire bought his first lettuce thinner in 2013, back when they were rare to nonexistent in Yuma. A tractor attachment with sensors, camera vision and nozzles sprayed fertilizer, acids or herbicides with precise accuracy on overcrowded rows of lettuce. Until then, thinning, removing some lettuce plants to improve the growth of one, was done exclusively by workers using a hoe. Today, virtually every Yuma farm uses thinning machines to some degree. Those who don't own a thinner lease it or hire services. Like all new technology, it went through several generations of refinement. The first machine 'went out to the scrap pile after about three years,' said McGuire, chief agricultural officer of JV Smith Companies, which grows around 8,000 acres of veggies and greens in Arizona. Now, he owns version four of the thinner developed by Agmechtronix, a New Mexico company that about 13 years ago designed the machine specifically for Yuma lettuce growers, said Agmechtronix owner Ryan Herbon. Multiple new players have jumped into the market of automation and cutting-edge technology since then, with company giants like John Deere buying startups for nine-digit sums. Western Growers, representing fresh produce farmers in Arizona, California, Colorado and New Mexico, launched an initiative to automate 50% of fresh produce activity by 2031. The market is already responding to that trend, and competition is growing fast among developers. 'We are talking about half a billion dollars of equipment sales in a large region over 2.5 years,' said Duflock, with Western Growers. Agriculture was an 'ideal opportunity and uncrowded market space' back in 2017 when Hylio decided to build drones specifically for spraying, fertilizing and scanning crops, said co-founder Arthur Erickson. The company has sold three drones in Arizona in the past two years, and hundreds more in other states. Recent changes in Federal Aviation Administration regulations, allowing drones of 55 pounds or more to fly under certain waivers, also helped that market grow. Hylio's biggest drone weighs 470 pounds when fully loaded and ready to take flight. To operate these systems efficiently, farms need connectivity. AI-driven technology takes a lot of data and a lot of bandwidth, and because many places in rural U.S. still lack broadband, tech companies found a workaround so farmers and service providers can collect data from the machine, then drive out of the farm to where they can upload it. In Yuma County, that technology would have a real-time response. Last month, with $6 million awarded under the American Rescue Plan Act, the county board of supervisors approved the installation of broadband towers to serve 180,000 acres of farmland, which could make a network of devices, software and cloud systems run smoothly. The "real holy grail," McGuire said, would be if farmers could run soil sensors on a tractor, measuring nutrients in real time and mapping the field by one-inch increments, and tie that data to a fertilizer injector in the back, which would deliver the "prescription." An automated thinner in which cameras assess plant health would send that information to a secondary spray system with fertilizer. Years ahead, there could be 'swarms' of automated technology working farmland in the same space, at the same time, ventured Osgood, the research manager at YCEDA. Yuma is the ideal testing site for these technologies, Osgood said. The area has "tightly choreographed" year-round crop production and extreme heat conditions, which provide both logistical and operational challenges. The various soil types and crops grown in the area also give companies diversity for their tests. 'If it works here, it'll work anywhere,' he said. H-2A visas: Growers' reliance on farmworker visa program has soared. Its future under Trump is unclear Proponents of automation in agriculture say it can address labor shortage challenges, increase yields, save money on fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and reduce some environmental impacts. Instead of spraying by aircraft, JV Farms now relies mostly on drones. The technology is quiet and reduces off-site drift — when sprayed chemicals move beyond the farm — because it has the control to fly to the edge of the field, stop, and turn around. "I don't get phone calls at two in the morning for planes flying over," said McGuire about the drones' perks. Like with the aircraft sprays, drones also fly at night to avoid exposing crews to the chemicals, he explained. The greatest advertisement for automation, however, is still that it reduces labor costs. As migrants who have worked in the agricultural industry for decades grow older and border enforcement toughens, growers have increasingly turned to an expensive visa program known as H-2A. Using a thinner, one operator can do the work of 45 people, estimated McGuire. For JV Farms, that technology adoption meant that in four years, they went from hiring 22 farmworker crews to eight. There are two kinds of technology: labor-augmenting and labor-replacing. The first is complementary to the effort of farmworkers; the second substitutes machines for human labor. The first one is currently more common in agriculture, but the landscape is changing. Nearly half of the respondents of a 2022 Western Growers survey said they'd be increasing their spending on automation anywhere between 10% to 50% over the next three years. Nearly a third of respondents expected to spend over 50% extra. Eliminating jobs with automation is not exclusive to the agricultural industry, but it carries similar moral dilemmas. Businesses improve their bottom line, while many livelihoods can be compromised. That is particularly true of farmworkers who have some of the weakest labor protections in the U.S. and often have limited job mobility. "The technology is morally neutral," said Antonio de Loera, communications director for United Farm Workers. "The question is, how is it deployed? Is it used to dispose of workers? "On the flip side, you could see a world where technological progress allows these jobs to be safer and more dignified." In the past, automation has also led to industry consolidation. In the 1960s, tech companies released a commercial tomato harvester for California's cannery industry and a tomato variety engineered to withstand mechanical picking. The transition eliminated tens of thousands of farmworker jobs and reduced the number of tomato farmers in California by 82% in five years. Four companies held nearly full control of the market. Depending on who is at the table, de Loera said, "the technology will be deployed only with their interest and bottom line in mind." In Goodyear, around a small automated seeder, six women worked in a tiny assembly line. Two moistened and turned over a big pile of soil substrate and fed it into the machine; others lined and inspected the trays on the belt, and piled them after trays had been evenly seeded and watered. Preparing micro-green trays is now done three to four times faster than the rudimentary process when employees had to seed trays by hand. It has increased yields and resulted in a more consistent product. Months later, Duncan Family Farms bought a microgreen harvester, so after the trays had produced tender leaves in the greenhouse, they could be evenly cut by the machine and dumped into shipping boxes. That last change also meant that now the six employees don't have to use knives to cut 3-inch plants. The whole process of taking care of microgreen production is like running a daycare, said Patricia Guzman, assistant supervisor for the crew. Coriander, kale, cabbage, arugula and radishes take a maximum of 20 days from seeding to harvest, and under the high-humidity conditions of the greenhouse and the dense planting, can catch mold if not inspected. A spot of decay can contaminate a line of microgreens. The whole operation is reliant on them being watchful, Guzman said. "(The machines) streamline the process, but could never fully replace human work." Clara Migoya covers agriculture and water issues for The Arizona Republic and azcentral. Reach her at This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona farmers experiment with AI to improve crop harvests
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Carbon Robotics Introduces the First and Only Tractor Autonomy Solution with Real-Time Remote Supervision and Control
Installed on existing tractors, Carbon AutoTractor provides farmers with production-ready autonomy that eliminates stoppages, operates 24/7, and increases efficiency SEATTLE, March 31, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Carbon Robotics, the leader in AI-powered farming, today announced the launch of Carbon AutoTractor, a breakthrough tractor autonomy solution. Powered by Carbon AI, Carbon AutoTractor is installed on existing tractors and is remotely monitored by Carbon Robotics operators, who handle interventions in real time to ensure seamless operation. Carbon AutoTractor delivers reliable, uninterrupted autonomous tractor operation—helping farmers increase productivity, reduce labor dependency, and scale operations. Developed with direct feedback from farmers, Carbon AutoTractor addresses the key barriers that have prevented the widespread adoption of tractor autonomy: frequent stoppages requiring farmer intervention, complex supervision and management, and unreliable solutions not built for 24/7 production operations. "Too often, autonomy in agriculture has been overpromised and underdelivered," said Paul Mikesell, CEO and founder of Carbon Robotics. "We built Carbon AutoTractor to change that—by working closely with farmers every step of the way to design a solution rooted in simplicity, reliability, and the realities of modern farm operations. This is autonomy shaped by real-world experience, not just another tech experiment." Carbon AutoTractor delivers autonomy farmers can trust by combining two core components: the Carbon Autonomy Kit and the Remote Operations Control Center (ROCC). Unlike other autonomy solutions, Carbon AutoTractor is continuously monitored by trained operators who can intervene immediately when something unexpected arises—like debris, wildlife, or irrigation pipes. That means fewer stoppages, no in-field resets, and the confidence that work keeps moving, even when conditions don't go as planned. Simple to install and run, the Carbon Autonomy Kit is initially compatible with John Deere 6R and 8R Series tractors, requiring no permanent modifications and installation completed in less than 24 hours. Once installed, tractors can toggle between autonomous and manual operation as needed. The system integrates seamlessly with Carbon Robotics' LaserWeeder, automatically adjusting speed to optimize weeding performance based on weed type, size, and density—boosting coverage by up to 20% compared to manually operated systems. "Carbon Robotics proved with the LaserWeeder that they know how to build and support real farming technology, and that's why we trust them with Carbon AutoTractor," said Brandon Munn, farm manager at Columbia Basin Onion LLC. "Now, with many of our tractors and LaserWeeders running autonomously with Carbon AutoTractor, we're able to operate more hours, address labor challenges, and make night shifts safer and more reliable. This isn't just automation; it's a practical solution that's fundamentally changing how we farm." Beyond precision weeding, Carbon AutoTractor autonomously performs ground preparation tasks, including tiling, plowing, cultivating, ripping, discing, listing, mulching, and mowing—eliminating the need for an in-cab driver. The system features multiple layers of built-in safety, including RTK-accurate GPS, 360-degree cameras, radar-based safety sensors, and physical, remote, and mobile e-stops—all connected via a high-speed, low-latency satellite link for instant responsiveness and oversight. With AI-powered decision-making, seamless integration across field tasks, and live operator surveillance, Carbon AutoTractor offers farmers a reliable, scalable path to autonomy. A flexible, pay-per-hour pricing model makes this technology more accessible and cost-effective. At launch, Carbon AutoTractor is available to select farms in key U.S. regions, with plans to expand availability in the future. To learn more or sign up for updates, visit: About Carbon Robotics Carbon Robotics is revolutionizing agriculture with AI-powered tools that reduce costs, increase productivity, and improve efficiency. The company's product line includes the LaserWeeder, which uses computer vision, deep learning, robotics, and lasers to eliminate weeds with millimeter accuracy, reducing weed control costs by up to 80% and increasing crop yields. Expanding beyond weed control, Carbon Robotics now offers Carbon AutoTractor, the only reliable, production-ready tractor autonomy solution. The system eliminates farmer intervention through its Remote Operations Control Center, which provides 24/7 supervision and real-time control. Farmers across the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia rely on Carbon Robotics to provide innovations that increase farm profitability and sustainability. Learn more at View source version on Contacts Rachael DowdCarbonRobotics@ 206-282-4923 ext. 115
Fox News
12-03-2025
- Business
- Fox News
Robot uses lasers to make chemical-free farming a reality
Imagine a future where farming is not only more efficient but also cleaner and greener. That's exactly what Carbon Robotics is promising with its latest innovation, the LaserWeeder G2. This game-changing technology figures to revolutionize weed control by ditching chemicals altogether. It's a solution that's both good for the planet and great for farmers looking to reduce their environmental footprint. The LaserWeeder G2 builds on the success of its predecessors to bring submillimeter weed control to a wider range of farms, crops and soil types. By harnessing the power of lasers, artificial intelligence and advanced robotics, the G2 offers an alternative to traditional herbicides and labor-intensive manual weeding. It is equipped with powerful 240-watt lasers that can destroy weeds with pinpoint accuracy. The G2 also features high-resolution cameras and enhanced optics for precise weed identification, utilizing Carbon AI that processes over 40 million labeled plants for accurate detection. Additionally, it includes target and predict cameras for weed identification. The G2 operates effectively day or night, thanks to its LED lighting system, and its modular design supports widths from 6.6 to 60 feet, making it adaptable to various farm sizes and needs. Underneath its sleek exterior, the LaserWeeder G2 boasts a GPS/LTE antenna for precise positioning, a chiller system for temperature control, self-contained weeding modules, satellite internet connectivity for real-time updates and an electrical cabinet that houses advanced processing units. The LaserWeeder G2 doesn't just remove weeds; it obliterates them. Using optimal thermal energy, the laser explodes cell walls at the meristem, effectively killing the weed from the inside out. This method is not only effective but also prevents regrowth. The company claims an impressive 80% reduction in yearly weed control costs and a 99% kill rate on all types of weeds. Moreover, the LaserWeeder G2 offers models tailored for over 100 specialty crops. The LaserWeeder G2 is versatile, capable of working with a wide range of crops, including leafy greens, onions, carrots and brassicas. This adaptability makes it a valuable asset for farmers who cultivate diverse crops. The G2 isn't just a one-trick pony. Its LaserThinning feature allows it to eliminate 99% of unwanted plants, operate continuously day and night and simultaneously thin and weed crops. This capability makes it a versatile tool for farmers looking to optimize their crop management. Farmers are already seeing the benefits of laser weeding technology. Tanimura & Antle, a leading fresh produce company, has integrated the LaserWeeder into their operations. Scott Rossi, VP of northern farming operations, praises the technology for its efficiency and contribution to sustainable farming practices. While the LaserWeeder G2 is a powerful tool, it's important to note that it's classified as a class 4 laser product. Users must exercise caution to avoid eye or skin exposure to direct or scattered radiation. By offering a chemical-free, labor-reducing solution to weed control, the LaserWeeder G2 has the potential to transform farming practices worldwide. As we move towards more sustainable and efficient agricultural methods, innovations like the LaserWeeder G2 pave the way for a greener, more productive future in farming. With its impressive accuracy, adaptability and potential for cost savings, the LaserWeeder G2 could indeed be the future of farming. As more farmers adopt this technology and real-world data continues to accumulate, we may see a significant shift in how we approach weed control and crop management. Given the LaserWeeder G2's potential to drastically reduce pesticide use and improve crop quality, do you think there should be a major push or incentive program to encourage all farmers to adopt this laser technology? Why or why not? Let us know by writing us at For more of my tech tips and security alerts, subscribe to my free CyberGuy Report Newsletter by heading to Follow Kurt on his social channels: Answers to the most-asked CyberGuy questions: New from Kurt: Copyright 2025 All rights reserved.
