Farm Journal has learned that for the next few weeks (until Oct. 16) John Deere dealerships across the U.S. and Canada are offering See & Spray Premium smart spraying kit installs for free on qualifying sprayers.
To qualify for the promotion, the sprayer must be a model year 2018 or newer John Deere machine with a G5 display, JDLink modem, and a 120-foot spray boom with ExactApply and BoomTrac Pro 2.0 installed and turned on.
Growers also need to agree to run the technology across 500 acres in-crop for the first year of use. Beyond those boxes to check, no additional concessions from growers are required to qualify for the promotion. After the 500-acre milestone is achieved, the technology is forever the farmer’s to keep and use how they see fit.
Ag retailers that maintain their own application fleets, as well as custom application service providers, are also eligible for the promotion.
The $5 per acre subscription fee currently associated with See & Spray does still apply, Deere says.
However, in 2025 the company intends to change how that fee is billed. Previously farmers had to pay a tiered acerage fee (crop type dependent) for every acre they drove over with the See & Spray system activated, regardless of whether the machine was spraying or not spraying. Next year, that fee will only be billed when the machine is not actively applying, so farmers will only be billed for the acres where the technology is actively engaged and saving them money.
“One thing I would note is this is a one-time program; this is not something that anyone should expect us to keep running,” says Tyler Hogrefe, manager, production ag marketing, John Deere. “Now is the right opportunity to do this to help our customers.”
Hogrefe cites the ongoing drought that has beset much of the Midwest and other areas of the country, as well as low commodity prices and an overall difficult operating environment as motivation for deeply discounting the technology. See & Spray Premium debuted in 2023 as a precision upgrade, and in 2024 it was offered with a $25,000 price tag.
John Deere recently discussed See & Spray’s ongoing evolution from a performance standpoint. The manufacturer says farmers ran the technology across over 1 million acres this year, reducing herbicide application by an average of 59%.
John Deere also said it will focus in 2025 on helping ensure farmers and their agronomic advisors understand how best to plan around and utilize the See & Spray system.
“Our customers and our dealers both are reporting back to us that the system works unbelievably well,” Hogrefe adds. “There’s a lot of progress that’s been made with See and Spray and the value it’s bringing to our customers, and we are starting to realize that at scale now.”
Ryan Riddle is a dealer capabilities manager with Central Ohio John Deere dealership Ag-Pro. He also spent 8 years working at John Deere corporate as an instructor and systems specialist. He echoes Hogrefe’s sentiment on See & Spray’s in-crop performance.
“With our three machines that we ran this summer in Ohio, we’re seeing a 63% reduction in herbicide applied,” he says. “So, it’s working very, very well.”
As many agronomy experts predicted when it first hit the market, See & Spray is influencing how farmers roll out their yearly herbicide programs.
“What we see a lot of is, as you start getting that post-emergence (weed) pressure, we’re seeing a lot of guys go through the field and maybe they’ll hit the weeds at first emergence, where the crop is at a stage where it can be applied to contact, and then hit them again to keep it clean right before the limitations of the technology (ie weeds get too big) hit; that’s where they’re fitting it in,” Riggle explains. “But it really depends on the farm’s plan, and how they want to use it. If they’re using, let’s say, a foliar feed before canopy set on soybeans, that’s a great opportunity where guys would throw that in the tank anyways, but now I don’t need to broadcast it across the entire field. I’m only going to put it on those weeds that the system can see.”
Hogrefe and John Deere want farmers to know they can get their hands on See & Spray in a number of ways.
“We’re able to get this system on a customer’s sprayer and meet them where they’re at, whether that’s on a brand-new sprayer they order from the factory, or with a Precision Upgrade kit on a sprayer they already have,” he adds. “You don’t always have to have the newest sprayer to have the latest technology.”
To see if you can get See & Spray installed on your sprayer for free, contact your local John Deere dealer.
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