First Fruits Farm, in Freeland, northern Baltimore County, was founded in 1998 by the Bernstein family. It began when Rick and Carol Bernstein started growing produce for charity. Today it has 281 acres, and 100% of what it grows is donated, rather than sold.
Elder JimZim and his buddy, Elder Grønk recently volunteered picking peppers at First Fruit Farm. They joined a small army. In 2025, First Fruits reported 22,192 volunteers contributing 60,313 hours, while the farm grew and distributed 3 million pounds of its own produce and distributed another 4 million pounds donated by third parties. Its distribution network now includes hundreds of organizations. The Maryland Food Bank is a longtime partner, and the Food Bank identifies First Fruits as one of the original farms that helped launch its Farm to Food Bank program.
Cover Crops
“Last season we also rolled and crimped 10 acres of cereal rye cover crop to plant no-till crops.” – First Fruits web site
First Fruits specifically mentions cereal rye. Instead of plowing it under, they can terminate it with a roller-crimper, leaving a flattened rye mat on top of the soil. That mat becomes armor, mulch and eventually organic matter.
Farm-Equipment.com has an interesting article that looks at the long-term return on investment (ROI) of planting cover crops. Cover crops are a good choice for farmers who are concerned about erosion, soil moister retention, soil health, reduced use of fertilizers and herbicides, and as an integrated activity to go alongside their zero- or low-till goals.
But the farmers must also reflect on the customized farm equipment that is required to plant and ultimately kill (or terminate) the cover crop.
A roller crimper is essentially a round drum, typically with angled fins in a chevron pattern, designed to knock over tall cover, kinking the stems and damaging the vascular system so the plant dies. Roller crimper units can be added to the front of planters or the front or back of tractors.
Successful cover crop agriculture seems as much an art as a science, and the skilled farmer must time the planting and terminating of the cover crop just so. Interestingly, the cover crop is terminated after the cash crop planted (or even germinated and several inches high!)
Cereal rye is a common cover crop in Franzen’s area of Iowa. At roughly $15 per acre for the seed, Franzen says it’s a good investment. If the weed control benefit can help the grower save one sprayer pass that season, the grower will likely come out money-ahead. Then, once the grower factors in some of the other agronomic benefits of using cover crops, Franzen says it becomes fairly easy to see the value.
“Using cover crops is one way farmers are reducing the amount of chemicals they’re putting in the ground,” Franzen says. “The growth in cover crops shows that farmers are really trying to grow their crops in a more efficient way.”
A Hungarian agro-forum has an interesting article about going no-till in Hungary, with an emphasis on the specialized machinery (called no-till seed drills) needed to plant seeds in an un-tilled field. The article encourages farmers to “put down the plow” to encourage soil health, but also in response to climate change that will bring droughts to the area.
If nothing else, climate change and the drying up of the continental climate will sooner or later force most Hungarian farmers to abandon plows and plowing.
Zsombor Diriczi highlighted: cover crops must be part of the [no-till] system from the first minute of the transition. The reason for this is that by abandoning plowing, we also have to find a solution for weed control, maintaining soil loosening, improving soil structure and making seedbeds. The roots and above-surface parts of the cover plants are perfectly suitable for this, while also nourishing soil life and protecting the soil from erosion
The web site also has a cool picture of Zsombor Diriczi (managing director of Demeter Biosystems Ltd.) with either a turnip or rutabaga. I’m going with “turnip”.
Zsombor Diriczi, based in Kosd, HU, is currently a Founder and Program Director at BlackSoil. Zsombor Diriczi brings experience from previous roles at Talajreform / Soil Reform, Démétér Biosystems, Pellets.eco and Freelancer. Zsombor Diriczi holds a 2016 – 2020 Bachelor of Applied Science – agriculture, agriculture operations, and related sciences @ MATE University.
No Till Farming
We use rotational grazing with our chickens and cattle and our cattle graze on harvested corn and cover crop fields which reduces feed costs and creates fertilizer for next year’s crops. The Farm continually looks for ways to reduce tillage to minimize soil erosion and nutrient run-off and 32 of the 40 acres of sweet corn planted in 2024 used no-till methods.
No-till farming (also known as zero tillage or direct drilling) is an agricultural technique for growing crops or pasture without disturbing the soil through tillage. No-till farming decreases the amount of soil erosion tillage causes in certain soils, especially in sandy and dry soils on sloping terrain. Other possible benefits include an increase in the amount of water that infiltrates the soil, soil retention of organic matter, and nutrient cycling. These methods may increase the amount and variety of life in and on the soil. While conventional no-tillage systems use herbicides to control weeds, organic systems use a combination of strategies, such as planting cover crops as mulch to suppress weeds.
The biggest challenge to no-till farming is weed control. Weeds can quickly take over the water and nutrients needed by intended crops and drastically reduce yield.
Traditionally, plowing was done to turn over the soil and uproot the weeds.
Let’s face it, unless things really change, we’re tied to our current economic realities like Gorilla glue on a tennis shoe.
Here are the major ways of controlling weeds in a commercial farm setting:
plowing
herbicides
cover crops
mowing
flames – burning off the weeds
newfangled AI!
hand weeding
For most of agricultural history, weeding was arguably the defining chore of rural domestic life. Before modern machinery and chemicals, weeding was a continuous battle that dictated family size, school schedules, and daily routines.
For hand-weeding, the economics of commercial farming becomes very evident. Elder G runs some number for us:
One organic vegetable experiment averaged about 42 labor-hours per acre for weed-control activities.
The farmer’s actual labor cost would be higher once payroll taxes, workers’ compensation, supervision, recruitment, transportation or other labor overhead enters the picture. So I think $800 to $1,000 per acre is a defensible back-of-the-envelope figure for one substantial manual-weeding requirement of roughly 40 hours/acre using fairly compensated labor. A lightly weeded field might be a few hundred dollars per acre; an ugly field requiring repeated hand passes could sail comfortably past $1,000.
Now let’s scale that to First Fruits Farm’s 281 acres, purely as a thought experiment, not as a claim about how many acres they actually crop or weed in this fashion. At 40 hours per acre: 281 acres × 40 hours = 11,240 person-hours. At $20/hour: $224,800 in direct wages.
Elder G
Now for the real reality check. In commodity farming (corn, soybeans, etc.) the net revenue per acre is very small.
The University of Illinois estimates that since 2000, a 50/50 corn-soybean rotation on high-productivity central Illinois land has averaged about $100/acre in net farmer returns. But that average conceals a roller coaster of profitable years, break-even years, and outright losses.
For 2026, current Illinois projections illustrate the knife-edge economics nicely. Corn is projected around $50–60/acre profit in northern and central Illinois, while soybeans are around $90–116/acre. Southern Illinois is roughly break-even on corn and about $30/acre on soybeans. And these figures include expected government-program payments and average cash rent.
The striking thing is how much money passes through an acre to produce that little residue of profit. In 2025 Illinois data, total economic costs averaged roughly $1,100–1,200 per acre for corn and $820–910 for soybeans.
Elder G
Imagine the squeeze the farmer is in: if everything goes just right, the weather is cooperative, the futures markets hold, the price of diesel doesn’t jump due to a demented president’s war, then maybe s/he can hope to net $100 per acre.
The Rise of the AI Weeders
AI/Herbicide Weeders
YVERDON-LES-BAINS, Switzerland/CHICAGO (Reuters) – In a field of sugar beet in Switzerland, a solar-powered robot that looks like a table on wheels scans the rows of crops with its camera, identifies weeds and zaps them with jets of blue liquid from its mechanical tentacles.
Undergoing final tests before the liquid is replaced with weedkiller, the Swiss robot is one of new breed of AI weeders that investors say could disrupt the $100 billion pesticides and seeds industry by reducing the need for universal herbicides and the genetically modified (GM) crops that tolerate them.
The stakes are high. Herbicide sales are worth $26 billion a year and account for 46 percent of pesticides revenue overall while 90 percent of GM seeds have some herbicide tolerance built in, according to market researcher Phillips McDougall.
But ecoRobotix, developer of the Swiss weeder, believes its design could reduce the amount of herbicide farmers use by 20 times.
Michael Owen, associate chair at Iowa State University’s Department of Agronomy, reckons it would now cost agrochemical giants up to an almost prohibitive $400 million to develop a next-generation universal weedkiller.
Bayer’s Condon said in the current environment precision spraying could well be the final blow to further attempts to develop new broad-spectrum or non-selective herbicides.
“Everything that comes tends to be selective in nature. There won’t be a new glyphosate. That was probably a once-in-a-lifetime product,” said Condon.
High end, high tech. AI processes on-board camera image data to identify weeds, then zaps them with lasers.
The Carbon Robotics Laserweeder G2
Carbon Robotics claims that the laser weeding machine can offer a 1-to-3-year return on investment (ROI) via labor and herbicide savings.
Here’s the high-end Laserweeder G2-1200
No-Till Fever at WLBOTT
Fred, our penitent Intern, is really catching the farm bug. He’s taking down some of his posters (with the exception of Joan Jett – some things are sacred, after all) and replacing them with some boss John Deere equipment.
