Agriculture, forestry and fisheries / Precision agriculture equipment
John Deere: Spraying herbicide only on weeds
- Company
- John Deere
- Country
- United States
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Checked a source excerpt through a search tool
The work problem
The old method is to spray herbicide across the whole field. The chemical reaches spots where there are no weeds. Chemical cost leaks away and healthy crops are exposed to the spray as well.
Technology and data
See & Spray came out in 2021. Cameras on the sprayer boom and processing units mounted on the machine scan the field. Travelling at up to 15 miles per hour, it sees more than 2,500 square feet per second. When it finds a weed, John Deere's ExactApply system fires only the relevant nozzle. While the work runs, an application map and a weed distribution map are produced together. Growers view these maps in the John Deere Operations Center and decide the next season's chemical plan. Existing sprayers can be fitted with it through a precision upgrade kit.
Results
John Deere said the technology was used on more than five million acres of farmland in the 2025 growing season. It explained that over the same area, non-residual herbicide use fell by close to 50 percent on average, saving close to 31 million gallons of herbicide mix. It wrote that in trials across several states, soybean yield rose by an average of two bushels per acre. It said there were also reports of less stress because healthy crops came into less contact with the chemical.
Limits and open questions
This is an aggregate across many growers, not one company's adoption case. The reduction rate and the yield are figures given by John Deere.
Sources
- Advancing Weed Control With John Deere’s See & Spray™ Technology | MachineFinderedge.machinefinderpro.deere.com, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.