They’ve now staggered their planting out to ensure they’re not planting too much on the same day, otherwise the LaserWeeder would not be able to get to enough acres at the ideal time. They also break bottoms a day earlier, to make sure their furrows are going to be firm enough to handle the weight. “It took us a little bit to figure those things out,” Harmon says. “But once we got that dialed in, we just hit the ground running.” DATA COLLECTION AND CUSTOMER SUPPORT Now Braga Fresh is starting to figure out how to tap into an additional benefit of the LaserWeeder: data. The LaserWeeder provides its customers with the number of weeds shot, weeds seen, weeds skipped, stand counts, averaging spacing for plants, plants per acre, and heat maps, so they can see where their weed hotspots are. This has allowed Braga Fresh to do things like an extra pre-irrigation to germinate the weeds before they run the LaserWeeder, so they’re now seeing a population decrease in their weed seedbank. “The amount of information is almost unlimited at this point,” Harmon says. “Now we’re just trying to figure out how to use it all.” In addition to its weed-killing abilities and data collection, Braga Fresh has been impressed with Carbon Robotics’ customer support. Harmon says they’ve been proactive in working with their customer base to see how else they can help them, and they’re very reliable whenever Braga Fresh runs into a problem, whether it’s over the phone or coming out to the field. “The customer service has been unparalleled,” Harmon says.
continuing to update their models faster — usually within a few hours; at most 24 hours — especially as more customers use the machine. • The LaserWeeder does not kill every weed, so Braga Fresh still had to do some follow-up hand weeding. But now they only need three crews of 18, allowing them to reallocate the other 21 employees to other critical farmwork like harvest, a task they were experiencing a labor shortage on. The hand-weeding crews can now go through the fields at a rate of 12-15 minutes per acre (4-5 acres per hour) after the LaserWeeder pass, whereas it used to take an average 90 minutes to weed one acre without the LaserWeeder. As a result, Braga Fresh reduced their per-acre hand-weeding costs to $282.28. This brings their total per-acre weeding costs to $550 an acre, for a per-acre net savings of $350 compared to hand-weeding alone. • Across 2,350 acres, one LaserWeeder brings an annual weeding cost savings of $822,500, a 39% reduction over hand-weeding alone. Continued operational costs after the depreciation of the implement and tractor are predicted to be $148.14 (see Table 3), which will decrease weeding costs to $430.42 per acre, for a per-acre net savings of $469.58 (see Table 4). ADJUSTING MANAGEMENT FOR LASER WEEDING Adding the LaserWeeders did require some changes to farm practices. “If you get to a field too early, you can sink because the machines are heavy. 1 But if you get there too late, the weeds are too big and the lasers cannot kill them,” Harmon says. “Getting in the field 7-10 days after germination is ideal because it’ll give you the most efficient kill.”
1. The combined weight of the LaserWeeder and tractor is over 20,000 pounds. Carbon Robotics does offer the Track LaserWeeder for better weight distribution and to help reduce compaction at an additional cost.
“ The customer service has been unparalleled. ” — Kyle Harmon, Braga Fresh, Director of Farming
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