I think the article's theory on why people plow is wrong: it is not to let the soil hold more water, but to get rid of weeds. I know someone who did no-till for a while, and he found that you have to spray with glyphosate to keep the weeds down. Eventually the weeds that had evolved to be glyphosate-resistent spread to his area, and he had to go back to regular plowing. He said that the no-till really improved the soil, though.
No-till requires to have different crop patterns, where you plant again right after harvesting to avoid weeds overgrowth.
And/or tarp to occultate the weeds and dormant seedstock
I think no till makes most/only sense for intensive market gardening. Where you're weeding by hand or in greenhouses and maybe applying a recurring layer of compost and maybe cover crops to prevent the soil from being bare.
Sounds great, let’s have more of that!
You're already complaining about the price of food, when farmers are barely breaking even on it.
You won't pay ten quid for a sustainably-farmed chicken, and I bet you're really really not going to pay ten quid for one single hand-grown ecologically-neutral farmed carrot.
And if you are, I've got some carrots for you right here. Discount if you order them in multiples of ten.
Spraying a little glyphosate emits a lot less CO2 than plowing.
Weeding actually seems like a fantastic usecase for those humanoid robots like figure, unitree, atlas etc. it’s easy and accurate plant recognition is mostly a solved problem.
They've got some robots that do it already, targeting weeds with lasers.
Yeah but they’re never going to be as versatile as a humanoid that can identify one, move the crop gently aside and rip it out of the ground. I’m sure the lasers fail pretty quickly after the plants are a few inches tall due to lack of visibility.