It goes without saying that if there is a farm, there has to be weeds as well. However, having said this, the farmers can always implement various ways and strategies to reduce the weed growth. With the means to curtail the expansion of weeds, it is very important to understand that weeds in total cannot be totally eradicated. Weeds look the same like any other plant. In between the crops, the weeds keep growing and suck out all the nutritional value from the soil.

It is as if they grow on the cost of the other important crops. If not controlled they can cause dangerous crop failures. From fighting for the necessary resources to being dangerous disease hosts, weeds should be all means be curtailed. Though in the past few years, there have been various inventions to reduce the growth of the weeds yet none is too satisfactory. However, one of the most recent weed control technique is precision hoeing. The weed control methods are of various types – they can be chemical or biological or natural.

In here, we will first discuss the various traditional and natural ways by which weed growth can be lowered. After it, we will look into the way by which precision hoeing can more effectively cut down the dangerous weeds.

The Precision hoeing is the new weed control measure in the fields

1) Chemical ways to control the spread of weeds

One of the most effective means to reduce the weed growth is by the usage of chemical means. In this, the industrial herbicides are put to use. They not only kill the weeds but also slow down their growth. However, the usage of the chemical herbicides is not very easy. They primarily get divided into two parts – the selective chemical herbicides and the non selective chemical herbicides. The former one reduces the growth of the weeds only and has no effect on the main crop or for that matter any other crop except the weeds.

The latter one is more dangerous than the former one. The non selective chemical herbicides not only kill the weeds but also target the main crops. Owing to the effectiveness of the latter one, in the recent years, it has become extremely popular with the farmers. The chemical herbicides are also rated according to their toxic level. The non selective chemical herbicides are the most toxic and thus are labelled as the class 1. However, contrary to this are the selective chemical herbicides which get labelled as Class 4. Since, these herbicides contain chemical elements, so they do not get easily absorbed into the soil.

When due to heavy rain or due to excessive irrigation water supply, the soil gets washed off into any nearby water body, then the remaining chemical herbicides pollute the water. All the more, due to the heavy or frequent usage of these chemical herbicides can also cause dangerous and chronic human diseases and can also leave the soil barren and unhealthy for future farming.

2) Mechanical means to lower the chances of weed growth in the field – Precision hoeing

With the advent of science and technology, the usage of mechanical means in farming has increased a lot. Within the domain of mechanical means, the farmers usually utilise the garden hoeing and the precision hoeing methods to remove the weeds. It is absolutely necessary to mention that the weed control processes are very hectic, time consuming and labour intensive. However, with the precision hoeing, all these things have been erased. The weed control method has now become easier and faster to say the least.

In the precision hoeing, a machine hoe is kept on a tractor and that regulates the weed removal all through the field. This machine has fine and sharp blades which are spaced uniformly. All the more, with the attached GPS, a single farmer can easily remove weed from at least hundreds of acres of land. This machine comes with effective and high camera resolutions to differentiate the weed from the main crop. When the weed gets targeted, the weeds are cut up to a length of 6 cm with the sharp blades and then the hoe uproots the weeds as well. Precision hoeing makes use of RTK – GPS (Real Time Kinetic Global Positioning System).

With the help of this technology, not only the direction is calculated but also the distance. To use this, the farmers initially sets the limit of land in which he will try to remove the weeds and also makes arrangement for fixing the speed of the machine. The best aspect of this machine is that unlike the chemical herbicides, they do not target the main crops. They only chop and uproot the weeds.