Organic dairy and horse farms depend on high-quality pastures, yet many of them face a persistent and costly challenge: the spread of tap-rooted weeds such as dockweed. These weeds reduce forage quality and therefore milk production and can also cause severe health risks to livestock. German start-up Paltech GmbH identified a gap in the market for a herbicide-free solution, and with support from ESA’s Business Applications and Space Solutions (BASS) and the German Space Agency (DLR), developed EM-GROW - an innovative service powered by robotics, GNSS-based localisation and an AI-driven plant detection system.
Grassland-based livestock farming plays a central role in the agricultural landscape in many parts of Europe, and the organic farming sector is growing, driven by increasing demand. Nearly 85% of organic grassland farms report issues with dockweed infestation, and manual removal - still the dominant method - requires up to 500 hours of labour per hectare. It is against this backdrop that the EM-GROW solution was developed, addressing the core needs of the target market: improved yield, reduced labour and compliance with organic farming standards.
“Not all green in fields is good for cows, and some large weeds such as dockweed can cause considerable yield losses. These weeds spread quickly and take over edible grass, while their taproots, reaching depths of up to 1.5 meters, make manual removal a strenuous and time-consuming task for organic farmers. Existing solutions for weed control in permanent grasslands either fail to scale, require large amounts of water or energy, or are incompatible with organic guidelines,” explains Felix Schiegg from Paltech GmbH.
“We developed EM-GROW to provide farmers with an efficient, environmentally friendly and labour-saving alternative to manual weed control, combining advanced technology with a practical service model that fits the workflows and economic constraints of farmers.”
The EM-GROW solution was initially offered as a Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS) model, but with the robots now subsidised by the Bavarian state in Germany, the business model has been adjusted to produce and sell the product directly to farmers too – enticing this sector to benefit from technological innovation and automation, relieving the impact of labour-intensive and costly manual tasks.
Key features of EM-GROW include autonomous reseeding to support grass regrowth, low resource consumption (no water, no fuel), and digital reporting of treated areas and extracted weeds. Other benefits include a wide application window of more than 200 days per year, with the robots capable of operating both day and night.
Early field tests and demonstrations with organic farmers, dairy associations and conservation authorities in Germany and Austria helped refine the service concept and user needs, followed by a pilot stage validating the system in real operating conditions.
“A user-centred approach has been central to us to ensure that EM-GROW delivers both practical value and scalability – using EM-GROW is 20% cheaper than paying someone on minimum wage to do this work, while offering a 99% time saving and more than 95% effectiveness in removing the weeds,” Mr Schiegg said.
The future is looking bright for EM-GROW, and Mr Schiegg says applying for an ESA BASS funding programme made all the difference: “Without the help of ESA and DLR, we would not have been able to get where we are today – their support has been particularly vital to help us successfully reach our customers with our space-enabled solution.”
Asimina Syriou, Applications Engineer for BASS, said: “The goal of a BASS demonstration project is to help businesses establish and validate the technical feasibility and commercial viability of their space-enabled product, as well as the market appetite for it – this is exactly what has been achieved with EM-GROW's fully autonomous herbicide-free weed control solution. The foundations for a scalable commercial rollout have been laid, and I look forward to seeing how they continue to grow.”
“EM-GROW is a very interesting application that combines highly complex technological development with the use of space data. It is an easy-to-understand and illustrative example that demonstrates to decision-makers to why we like to support this programme,” added Anke Freimouth from DLR.