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Interrow-hoes are back as herbicides decline in Europe. And why you don’t need a laser weeder.

Modern (inter)row-hoes — The Swiss army knife of mechanical weeders. A comprehensive guide.

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This quarter’s FFC Bulletin takes a deep dive into ‘row hoes’ — what used to be called interrow hoes / cultivators.

A quiet revolution is happening. The well known challenges facing herbicides including evolved resistance, next to no new chemistry and legislative head winds, have reached the point that in Europe mechanical weeding in the form of ‘row hoes’ are now mainstream. In the last few years some of the biggest names in agricultural machinery have been buying into mechanical weeding: Lemken bought Steketee, Kverneland bought Phenix Agrosystem, Väderstad bought Thyregod’s weeder division. John Deere have never got out of mechanical weeding, particularly in North America, though they have kept their light under a bushel, and, some time back they bought Monosem, who also have strong showing in mechanical weeders. The once a hyper niche specialty of mechanical weeding has clearly joined the big time.

Compared with the staid world of herbicides where the last really big news was the ALS herbicides in the 1980s massive changes have been afoot in mechanical weeding. Row hoes, which used to be called interrow hoes or cultivators in N. America, have come to dominate. Interrow hoes only weeded the interrow leaving the crop row (intrarow) to be hand weeded. Non-discriminatory intrarow weeders on interrow hoes can achieve very high levels of in-row weed control, hence the change of name.

Row-hoes have also evolved to become weed management platforms – on which a wide range of weeding tools are mounted that match the weeding task in hand – like a Swiss army knife has lots of different tools on it. Coupled with computer guidance systems that allow row hoes to be incredibly fast and accurate, automation such as downpressure and section control, mean that a modern row-hoe compared to its predecessors is a self driving Tesla car compared to a horse and cart.

This quiet revolution in row hoes compares with the much greater media coverage that robotic weeders, such as laser weeders, have been getting. While robotic weeders are technologically astonishing, their capital costs are equally astonishing while their work rates are pretty low. In comparison modern row-hoes cost less to buy, have vastly greater work rates and can kill the most important close-to-crop plant weeds that most robotic weeders can’t. Row-hoes really should therefore be the first choice in mechanical weeding compared to robots.