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# In Kalbar, a camera that knows a carrot from a weed, and a laser the growers call the fire snail
- URL: https://www.earthtoseanews.com/kalfresh-weeding/
- Published: 2026-11-10T07:58:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-11-10T07:58:44.000Z
- Description: In the Fassifern Valley, two machines are picking weeds out of carrot and onion rows one plant at a time, one with a tiny targeted spray, the other with light alone. Growers designed the trials themselves.
- Author: Nicole McMahon
- Tags: Innovations, Sustainable Living, All stories

Kalbar, in the Fassifern Valley southwest of Brisbane, is a town of vegetable farms under the Scenic Rim, and this year two unusual machines are working its paddocks. One is the Ecorobotix ARA, a Swiss built sprayer that photographs the crop as it rolls, tells a carrot seedling from a weed and puts a tiny dose on the weed alone, leaving the soil around it untouched. "It can easily tell the difference between the crop and the weed," says Craig Dingle, Head of Agriculture at Kalfresh, and his rule of thumb is simple: "the fewer weeds you have competing for water and nutrients, the better." Nearby, certified organic grower Ed Windley has been trialling an American laser weeder from Carbon Robotics. It spots each weed as it emerges and singles it out with a pulse of light, no chemical at all. "We call it the fire snail," Ed says, "because it is a very slow moving object, that smokes the weeds on the way."

![Farmland at Kalbar in the Fassifern Valley with Mount French behind, 1989](https://storage.ghost.io/c/0d/06/0d067be9-327f-4730-b9c3-5f0cdd2bc6fa/content/images/2026/11/farmland-at-kalbar-in-the-fassifern-valley-with-mount-french-behind-19.jpg)

The Kalbar farming community and Mount French, Fassifern Valley, in 1989\. Photograph: Iraphne R. Childs, QUT Digital Collections, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.

Fewer sprays in a valley whose creeks run to the Bremer River and Moreton Bay means less on the paddock and less in the water, and for organic growers, whose weeding has mostly meant hands and hoes, the laser is a machine that fits their rules. Kalfresh has joined other Queensland farmers to form Farm Tech Australia, so the trials are grower led, and the work on onions, corn, carrots, beans, cabbage and broccoli at Kalbar and Clintonvale feeds into Hort Innovation's thirty million dollar Next Generation Weed Management project, where Applied Horticultural Research measures the results and shares them with grower groups in Queensland and Victoria. No figures are published yet, and the laser suits low crops like beans and onions rather than tall corn, which shades out its own weeds. Still, somewhere in the valley a machine is crawling down a bean row, picking out weeds one by one with nothing but light.

### Sources and links

An Earth to Sea News story, built mainly on Kalfresh's own announcement (15 October 2026), with project detail from Applied Horticultural Research and Farm Tech Australia. Photographs: as credited in captions.

- [Kalfresh, adopting laser and robotic farm technology](https://www.kalfresh.com.au/farm%5Ftechology/) (15 October 2026)
- [Farm Tech Australia, Next Gen Weed Project](https://www.farmtechaustralia.com.au/next-gen-weed-project-2/)
- [Applied Horticultural Research, next generation weed management at the Gatton AgTech Showcase](https://ahr.com.au/blog/next-generation-weed-management-takes-centre-stage-at-gatton-agtech-showcase)
- [Applied Horticultural Research, field trials begin, by Paulette Baumgartl](https://ahr.com.au/blog/formal-field-commence-for-next-generation-weed-management-project)
- [The Land, new agtech helps with farm weeds](https://www.theland.com.au/story/9251408/hort-connections-new-agtech-helps-combat-farm-weeds/) (25 May 2026, subscription needed)