I listened to those guys talk from the 2020 commodity classic, it was interesting to hear their perspective, in some ways they were really dialed in on things like uniform emergence and physical soil characteristics but in other ways they were lacking in some aspects, the general standard of agronomy most corn growers have access to must be fairly basic given how the record breakers were speaking.

Sorry to hear about the advice you received, hopefully it was a once off,

As far as weed control goes, I was thinking today that if systemic herbicides had not been invented we would have weed killing drones wandering fields across the world by now, and farmers would certainly not be making less money then they are now.

Have you ever heard of the samd permanent bed system? I think that could be a game changing tool for organic weed control, it uses the shoulders of a permanent raised bed as a guidance system to guide seeders, cultivators etc.