Even in the advent of massive textile influx from China and second-hand clothes from other countries, cotton farming is still regarded highly in Zimbabwe.

Dutch grower Sjaak Huetink is enthusiastic about using the Poulsen Robovator camera operated hoeing machine. “We have never sprayed as little or made as few weeding hours. Our plots have never been cleaner.”

By employing so-called deep-learning systems for crop recognition, machines that can combat weeds site-specifically with a minimum of labour and/or chemicals are getting ever closer.

The adage “out of sight, out of mind” has long summed up humans’ attitude to dumping personal and industrial waste. In a 1974 Scientific American article, the oceanographer Willard Bascom wrote that “the ocean is the plausible place for man to dispose of some of his wastes”. If done “thoughtfully”, he continued, “it will do no damage to marine life.”

Agriculture, which accounts for 70 percent of water withdrawals worldwide, plays a major role in water pollution. Farms discharge large quantities of agrochemicals, organic matter, drug residues, sediments and saline drainage into water bodies. 

They stop your food from sticking to the pan.

Tiny sticky droplets sprayed on crops to trap pests could be a green alternative to chemical pesticides, research has shown.

Farming Without Chemicals: How Can It Be Done? Andre Leu is an Australian organic farmer, an internationally recognised speaker, the author of ‘The Myths of Safe Pesticides’ and “Poisoning Our Children”. He was past President of IFOAM (The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements). and presently he is the international director of Regeneration International.

For many years, farming has focused heavily on the mechanical side of soil management.