Keeping American Ag Competitive

This is Tim Hammerich of the Ag Information Network with your Farm of the Future Report.

Farming seems to be getting tougher and tougher every year, especially for growers of fresh produce who have to compete with foreign imports. To remain competitive, Carbon Robotics CEO Paul Mikesell hopes technology can help. His LASERWEEDER allows farmers to zap weeds efficiently and precisely while saving farmers money spent on human labor.

Mikesell... "It will be nice over the years when we see the weed seed bank drastically reduced because laser weeder has gotten in there and knocked those weeds down before they went to seed. It will be nice if we didn't have to use as much water just to deploy herbicides along these crops, right? So I think, you know, we're, there's a lot of environmental positive impact we can be having along the way, also through this kind of automation and efficiency. And so all of those things are coming and we need to be able to do it as a country to remain price competitive, right? We can't keep having crops, you know, go to Mexico and lose our ability to grow our own food in this, in this country, that would be a real travesty. And, you know, the only way we're going to get there is through optimization and optimization really through automation. I think that's the only answer. You know, doing more with less."

Again that’s Carbon Robotics founder and CEO, Paul Mikesell.