Back in September, John Deere released some interesting stats regarding the performance of its See & Spray Technology in the crop protection application technology sphere.
The company says the technology it acquired via a $305 million acquisition of ag tech startup Blue River Technologies in 2017 has been run across over 1 million acres of cropland during the 2024 season, resulting in an estimated savings of 8 million gallons of herbicide mix.
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Deere hosted a webinar to help farmers, retailers, and custom applicators interested in the system understand some of the logistical and operational challenges that come along with converting from an all-broadcast to targeted broadcast herbicide strategy.
Perhaps that right there is a good starting point, since it was highlighted by John Deere representatives over the course of the hour and a half virtual meeting: See and Spray, both the Ultimate and Premium editions, are not a spot spraying technology; it’s what Deere is referring to as a “targeted broadcast application technology.”
That means when the technology senses the presence of weeds, it will broadcast a uniform rate of spray material across that area. The machine will not apply product in areas where it does not sense the presence of weeds.
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Dekalb, Illinois, fourth-generation corn, wheat and soybean farmer Dan Hartmann talked about his first season of See & Spray usage during the presentation. He purchased a See & Spray Premium Precision Upgrades kit from his local John Deere dealer and had it installed on a model year 2018 sprayer.
First and foremost, he learned that using See & Spray to its fullest abilities would necessitate moving from a two-pass program to a three-pass program. Even after making that shift and factoring in fuel and labor costs, Hartmann says he ended up saving $31,000 combined in herbicide application costs across his 5,500 acres.
“I’d say the only real issue that we ran into was when we had to empty the tank (of unused product) after the last field,” he says. “I ended up mixing and filling more than I needed, so you always need to be doing the math in your head on how many acres you have left and how many gallons are in the tank. It wasn’t a big deal though, in the end we just had to turn See & Spray off and broadcast everything for the last field, so the product was all used up.”
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The young Illini farmer, who recently was promoted to row crop manager and farms alongside his wife Ashely and his parents, says going forward he should be able to reduce his annual herbicide buy to cover somewhere around 60-70% of his total acreage. He feels comfortable banking on the fact the technology will result in significant savings of product applied.
One additional note to mention is that for now See & Spray is only available for use in corn, soybeans, cotton, and fallow crops. Deere representatives on the call said the company is working on its machine learning algorithms and in the near future we should see this technology opened up to small grains, peanuts, and sugar beet growers.
Here’s five tips we found interesting from John Deere’s end of year See & Spray presentation:
1. Nozzle Selection is Important
There are a handful of John Deere branded and third-party nozzle types available for See & Spray. In the system, nozzles are grouped in a six-nozzle module consisting of 3 broadcast nozzles and three “See & Spray” nozzles. The See & Spray nozzle grouping is rear-inclined to provide equivalent coverage at 15 mph to broadcast at 12 mph. Proper nozzle selection is vital for maximizing the system’s effectiveness and achieving accurate applications.
2. The Factory Settings May Require Adjustment
Within the G5 display there are Sensitivity and Buffer settings that can be manipulated to tailor your application for weed size and environmental conditions. By increasing your Sensitivity slider, you increase chemical usage by targeting smaller weeds, while lower sensitivity will ignore some of those tiny little baby weeds, thus reducing usage.
3. New Data Insights via Field Analyzer in Operations Center
Farmers can use the new weed pressure maps feature and the coverage (as-applied) map feature to analyze field performance, both in real-time from the driver’s seat as well as post-application in the app. Farmers can also give access to their John Deere Operation’s Center account to an agronomist, crop scouts, crop consultants, really anyone that will find value in accessing that data to help the farmer visualize and manage in-field weed distribution.
4. Variables Will Influence Success
Factors like tillage, crop rotation, and camera maintenance can impact system performance. Reducing tillage, leaving more crop residue in fields, and using cover crops can help reduce your herbicide usage in concert with the technology. And although it’s not a big burden, growers should do a quick visual inspection and clean off the camera modules across the boom before a spray job. Luckily, if you forget, there is an alert in the G5 display if your cameras become blocked by dirt or dust particles.
5. Speed and Height Matter
Often, John Deere representatives shared, customers that experienced performance issues with See & Spray were either driving too fast across the field or had the boom set too high. And crop height also matters. In corn, soybeans, and cotton, John Deere says the maximum height the crop can be for effective applications is 16” tall.
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