What Can Ag Retailers Charge For Latest Spraying Technology?
A little over a year ago, John Deere unveiled its See and Spray Ultimate, which can operate at field speeds up to 12 mph, and provide post-emergent herbicide savings up to 80% across its 120’ carbon fiber boom.
Jason Weirich vice president of Agri Services at MFA Inc., saw the technology in the field for the first time last June. And he was immediately intrigued.
“It’s clear the technology is here,” Weirich says. “And it’s really up to us to figure out how this fits into our business and how we serve farmers.”
John Deere says it’s still in the exploratory/early launch stages of the technology. The company has placed one or two demo units with dealers in key states to gain exposure, gather data and take input from operators.
MFA had a John Deere 612R outfitted with See and Spray Ultimate for eight weeks, and hosted a field day for 100 attendees to showcase the technology, its capabilities, and share the experience.
Weirich says running a See and Spray system is a seamless experience to operating a standard, modern John Deere sprayer. While operationally, Weirich says it would be easy to integrate See and Spray Ultimate systems in their fleet, the pricing of the application service is still a question.
He shares an example of a field located just across the road from the field day site, where Weirich himself ran the machine.
“I ran a two-tank system with one tank having Degree, Atrazine and Mustang Maxx and the second tank having glyphosate plus an adjuvant. Using See and Spray Ultimate, it applied to approximately 30% of the field. The penciled costs– the products used plus the technology fee–was 50 cents more per acre than a uniform application,” Weirich says.
John Deere has said See and Spray Ultimate has a per acre subscription/usage fee, but dealers set the price of the machine.
“I’m not sure how we’ll price using a technology like this,” Weirich says. “I’ve just got to make it pencil.”
He sees the value in having a dual tank system, individual nozzle control, and providing growers with a clean field and data to improve weed management the next year.
MFA is exploring on how to integrate additional technologies into its fleet of application equipment, which is a mixed brand fleet.
“We are working to bill growers from the as-applied maps off the machine and using the gallon usage data,” Weirich says. “It’s not implemented at scale yet, but we are working on it.”
He also shares how machine usage data has helped the application team, and for example, using telematics, they identified how to improve the percentage of time spent in the field, with one applicator increasing from 35% to 42% time spent in the field.
As one of the first retailers to commercial selective spraying in their agronomic offering, Jeff Crissinger, VP of Agronomy Sales/Marketing at NuWay-K&H Cooperative shares how they are positioning this technology with growers in 2023.
