Sensors

AgZen, Corteva Team up on AI-Powered, Retrofit Sprayer Tech

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 15:08:47 GMT

AgZen announces an agreement with Corteva to further “explore the commercial potential” of AgZen’s AI-powered crop spraying optimization technology, RealCoverage.

The news comes on the heels of Corteva’s big announcement on Oct. 1 , detailing the crop protection multinational’s plan to split its crop protection and seeds businesses.

AgZen, a tech startup spun out of MIT, is making a name for itself by pioneering feedback optimization for spray applications — a new approach the company thinks has potential to improve farmer outcomes and reduce crop input costs.

(AgZen)

AgZen’s first product, RealCoverage, is a retrofit kit that can be bolted onto any sprayer to measure and optimize the number of drops of agrochemicals applied to crops. The system features a boom-mounted sensor that analyzes the coverage and quality of spray applications in real-time, displaying actionable data to a tablet mounted in the cab. Farmers can use the data to optimize the physical settings on spray rigs, both self-propelled and pull-behind, to increase coverage.

The startup says its system works by leveraging AI and cutting-edge computer vision, and customers have used RealCoverage to save 30% to 50% on input costs.

Farmer Feedback

(AgZen)

Northwest Indiana farmer Bryan Brost slapped a RealCoverage system onto his Hagie STS 16 high-clearance sprayer to use on his waxy corn and soybean crops. He says it has helped boost his spray program efficiency overall by reducing application rates while maintaining optimal coverage throughout his 12,000-acre operation.

“The payback came in the first year,” he tells Farm Journal via text message. “We have increased our acres [covered] per day with less hours on the machine, the operator and the nurse tanks supplying product [to the sprayer].”

Corey McIntosh set the technology loose across his 4,000 acre spread in Missouri Valley, Iowa. He is looking forward to using the data to improve his application efficiency across the board. He’s also letting his neighbors and local retailer in on the secret.

“I was getting a chem shuttle refilled at [the] co-op, these guys have always been complimentary of our weed control, I asked them: ‘What percentage of leaf surface area do you think you are covering with your sprayers?’ One of their best operators said he thought 50% coverage. The salesman next to him said it would definitely be more than 60%,” McIntosh says.

“They were shocked when I told them we were at 9% to 10%, but nobody has had ever had a way to quantify this before,” he adds. “We are really looking forward to making improvements.”

Since launching on the market in 2024, AgZen says it covered more than 970,000 commercial acres of application across the U.S. on row crops and specialty crops.

Your Next Read: Breakthrough Fungicide Delivers White Mold Disease Control in Key Crops

Survey Says: Smart Farming Has Big Impact On U.S. Farms, And There’s Room for More

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 15:27:29 GMT

Smart farming technologies, like smart irrigation and targeted spraying systems, are helping farms reduce water use, burn less fuel and optimize fertilizer and pesticide applications. Those gains have led to a 5% increase in overall crop production in the U.S. in just the last five years.

That’s all according to newly released data from the Association of Equipment Manufacturer’s (AEM) “The Benefits of Precision Ag In The U.S.” report. You can read the full white paper study here .

“The overarching message is precision ag enables farmers to maximize use of their inputs,” says Austin Gellings, senior director of agricultural services, AEM. “We’re maximizing every drop of what we’re putting on our crops and on our soil, and I think that’s a very powerful message.”

Gellings found two specific aspects of the study results most compelling:

(Lori Hays)

U.S. farms have achieved an overall 5% reduction in annual water usage by adopting smart farming technologies like smart irrigation systems and soil moisture sensors. Gellings says the savings equates to about 824,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools worth of fresh water saved. It takes about 5 million standard 16 oz. bottled waters to fill just one Olympic-size swimming pool, he adds.

(Lori Hays)

Farmers who adopt targeted smart spraying application systems, like John Deere’s See & Spray and CNH Industrial’s SenseApply, can reduce America’s overall annual herbicide usage up to 55% if full adoption of the technology is achieved. The study defines full adoption as 90% of the total number of active farms in the U.S.

“We also found potential for an additional 6% increase in annual crop production with higher precision technology adoption rates,” he says. “It’s clear these technologies show almost unlimited potential in reducing inputs while increasing our output.

“[Technology is] a tool in the toolbox that helps our farmers step up to the challenges they face every single day, like they’ve always done. Our farmers always find a way to meet the challenge at hand. They are always going to innovate and find a way.”

The next big thing?

For Gellings, who grew up on the family farm in Wisconsin, daydreaming about the next big technology breakthrough for ag — something truly revolutionary along the lines of how smart spraying has impacted pesticide applications — gets him fired up. He says he can only imagine what his grandfather would say if he knew you could put a camera on a spray boom and only target the weeds as you drove 15 mph through the field.

“In 5 years, will there be a new technology like that, that revolutionizes the way we’re doing things and in a way that we never thought possible? That’s what’s exciting when I think about all the innovation that’s happening in agriculture,” he says. “We’re in this technology boom, and I can almost guarantee there will be another groundbreaking technology that don’t exist today that will come along and fundamentally change the way we farm.”

The updated study findings (the original study data was published back in 2020) were released in collaboration with the American Farm Bureau Federation, American Soybean Association, CropLife America and National Corn Growers Association. Kearney, a global management consulting firm, had a team of project management professionals and subject matter experts to assist AEM in executing the study update.

The full study is available now on AEM’s Insights page at www.aem.org/insights .

Your next read: Illinois Farmer’s Grain Bin Entrapment Turns Fatal, Son Shares Tragic Story to Save Lives

Farm Drone News: AgEagle Multispectral Sensor, GPS Satellite Launched and Rantizo Spins Off Software

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 20:32:33 GMT

AgEagle Aerial Systems Unveils New RedEdge-P Green Camera

(AgEagle Aerial Systems)

AgEagle Aerial Systems announces the launch of its new RedEdge-P Green, a multispectral camera designed to enable precision agriculture from planting to harvest.

AgEagle says farmers that use the new sensor payload can achieve higher yields through quicker interventions both early on and late in the crop cycle. Operators can reduce fertilizer and irrigation inputs and engage in smart harvesting techniques using optimized indices and targeted indices like the Plant Senescence Reflectance Index (PSRI).

Available as a standalone camera or in paired configurations with the original RedEdge-P and the RedEdge-P Blue, users can leverage up to 15 noise-resistant, data-rich spectral bands essential for large-area precision agriculture.

The RedEdge-P Green camera is NDAA-compliant and integrates with multiple drone platforms. Each camera kit includes a Calibrated Reflectance Panel (CRP) and a Downwelling Light Sensor (DLS2) for radiometric calibration.

Production of the RedEdge-P Green camera is underway, and the first units are expected to ship this week. For more information about the RedEdge-P Green visit ageagle.com.

Dutch Startup Launches Largest GPS Network for Drones, Tractors

(Lindsey Pound, iStock)

FreshMiners, a Netherlands-based IOT firm, launched a GPS service that enables accurate positioning for agriculture, construction and drone navigation, according to AgriMarketing.com.

AgriMarketing.com writes that the Dutch company is launching a service for extra-accurate GPS. It is intended for drone pilots, farmers and others. With this new technology, users can correct their GPS positions down to the centimeter. Real-time correction signals are sent to the user’s GPS receiver via a global network of base stations. This correction is essential for applications in agriculture, land surveying and drone navigation, among other things.

A subscription gives users access to the GEODNET network, which, with more than 19,000 base stations in over 140 countries, is now reportedly the largest RTK network in the world.

Read more at AgriMarketing.com.

Missouri Doctoral Student Says Drones Are Fine Tool for Crop Scouting

(Photo by Abbie Lankitus)

Researchers at the University of Missouri have discovered a mix of drones and AI can help farmers measure the health of their corn more efficiently.

Instead of relying on handheld devices, which are slow and impractical for larger fields, the researchers surveyed corn fields in mid-Missouri using drones equipped with special cameras to capture images and data.

After combining the drone images with soil data, the Mizzou researchers used a type of AI known as machine learning to quickly predict the chlorophyll content in the corn leaves of the entire field with great accuracy.

The study was led by Fengkai Tian (pictured above), a Mizzou doctoral student who works in the lab of Jianfeng Zhou, an associate professor in the College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources.

Read more from the University of Missouri here.

Rantizo Spin-Off American Autonomy Inc. Says It Can Close the Spray Drone Data Loop

Rantizo is now connected with the John Deere Operations Center through John Deere API services.

(Rantizo)

Ground rig as-applied data has been around for decades, and it comes in handy when you’re tabulating your end of year scorecard to find out which treatments boosted yields and where a spray might have fallen short.

Yet even though spray drones treated over 10 million crop acres in 2024 alone, there’s still a gap that exists in capturing that data and integrating it into your farm management software.

Former Rantizo CEO Mariah Scott, who is now the CEO of a spinoff operation dubbed American Autonomy Inc., says her new outfit’s AcreConnect platform can help close that gap with API connections into John Deere’s Operations Center and more major FMIS platforms.

“We talk to farmers about getting that complete view of your field management, by closing the loop so you understand what’s effective or what’s not,” Scott says. “Most of the farmers we talk to use spray drones and a ground sprayer, and that (as-applied) data from the sprayer goes right into their FMIS account, but with the spray drone it doesn’t always work like that.”

The deal to divest the spray drone operations side of the business was quietly announced on Aug. 1. The Rantizo name, the startup is a pioneering spray drone service provider, still lives on, but now there’s a clean break between the spraying operations and the software on the back end that enables it.

Learn more about the Rantizo-American Autonomy Spinoff over at PRNewswire.

Your Next Read: Southern Rust Has Infected Iowa Corn in ‘Likely Every County’

Meet The Forge: Kelly Hills Unmanned Puts New Spin on Ag Tech Field Testing

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 21:37:17 GMT

Over the weekend, Kelly Hills Unmanned, a company that says it is dedicated to accelerating multimodal technologies in agriculture and autonomy, announced the launch of The Forge.

It’s being described as a deployment-centered program designed to meld best-in-class ag technologies into new tools that farmers, ranchers and service providers can trust and use for decades to come, according to a press release from the group.

The Forge’s inaugural cohort hopes to bring together a “powerhouse group” of innovators and operators from across the ag technology landscape into a coordinated, systems approach to help growers identify and overcome agronomic issues before they become yield robbers.

The cohort members, or pillars, are:

Precision AI: Developers of real-time drone-based precision spraying systems that reduce chemical inputs and deliver hyper-targeted agronomic action.
Pyka: Builders of autonomous electric aircraft designed for aerial applications, logistics and mission-critical crop operations.
ScanIt Technologies: Experts in using early detection of airborne pathogens to maximize yields and minimize costs.
Heinen Brothers Agra Services: One of the nation’s largest aerial applicators and ag services companies, offering deployment scale and deep field expertise.
Yamaha Precision Agriculture: Pioneers of robotic and aerial technology for small scale, high-efficiency farming.
Drop Flight: Providers of droplet characterization and aircraft calibration tools to optimize spray accuracy and compliance in real-world operations.
Taranis: Global leaders in ultra-high-resolution aerial scouting, delivering precise field-level insights to boost agronomic decision-making.

For more information, head to www.kellyhills.us/the-forge .

Farm Journal reached out to Lukas Koch to pick his brain about this new, novel entrant to the ag tech ecosystem. We first met Koch last year during the Kelly Hills Unmanned summer field day near Seneca, Kan., where his group unveiled the Pyka Pelican Spray drone — at the time the largest, highest-capacity ag spray drone on the market (280-liter capacity). This year Kelly Hills is integrating the Pelican 2 (300-liter capacity, up to 222 acres per hour at 60-foot swath rate) into its aerial application arsenal.

Farm Journal: Would you call this an ag tech incubator or accelerator type of program, and if not, what’s makes The Forge different?

Lukas Koch (LK): “(The Forge) is neither of those, because we’re not taking a cash influx to create an R&D program. What we’re doing is creating new tools with existing technology — if they’re part of plug and play that’s fine, but we don’t care about that. We want to know if the tech has merit and does it fit on the acre, but maybe something with it is not fully there just yet? So, what are we supposed to do with it then? You have a technology and, for example, it can take high-res pictures and identify areas of your fields that need attention, but today the most likely options are using a ground rig or hiring an airplane to manage that in a meaningful way. For that example, we think there’s an opportunity to do that with a small spray drone, but then again the logistics are tough; you have to come back and land and swap out a battery or refill the tank so often. We’re going to take a bunch of existing technologies that already exist, ask them to change nothing and put them to the test — and we’ll push the bounds of what they can do, to make these all work together in a system.”

FJ: How will this all kind of come together and take shape this summer as the program rolls out?

LK: “We have a few drone companies (in the cohort), and there’s a droplet analysis program involved — I thought that was an important piece in analyzing the spray coverage we get. Right now, we have the in-field sensors out in the field to help us ground truth the data we get from overhead. And then the remote sensing piece gives us situational awareness; it tells us where we should be focusing our efforts. And overall, I think, OK, that’s great, but now you still have to make a treatment with either a ground rig or hire an airplane.

(www.KellyHills.us)

“But with our FAA test range (pictured above) that we were approved for last summer within Kelly Hills, now we can autonomously fly to those spots with a drone, either in line of sight or Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS), and we can make those treatments autonomously. This year, the tool we’re focusing on is true spot spraying BVLOS in corn and soybeans, and then next year hopefully we can make more tools or take that technology that already exists and make it into a tool for a grower, who can sign up for this subscription and buy one of these drones, and now I have a full encompassing suite of tools and I can know for sure what works and what does not work.”

FJ: How can farmers in Kansas learn more and possibly sign up to work with you guys?

LK: “There’s really two ways right now. For anything specific they might want to do, maybe there are some projects they are thinking about, go ahead and ping us on the website , and we’ll get back to you. And the other way is, once we’re done with a set tool or we wrap up our summer series of projects, we plan to make the results and findings available online, kind of like Beck’s Hybrids does with its farm applied research studies. We want people to see what we’re doing and to reach out with their ideas on how we can make better tools inside of The Forge and showcase some of these technologies together in one new product, and growers are very interested in this and would love to understand if they can package these technologies together and make an ROI.”

FJ: You already have this inaugural cohort in place, but are you already thinking about what’s next?

LK: “I have a couple companies that I need to further engage with now that they can see what The Forge is all about. A couple of those are involved in year-over-year (data) modeling technology that can say, OK, help me start to determine this is my pattern, and this is what I did last year; now can you tell me what to do next year and how to create more ROI? And then I think soil is a huge key right now, too. I don’t have any any soil type products in there, and soil sampling is great, but there are some neat companies that are focusing on soil-sensing technology that I think would be interesting to package in there, too. You know, in due time I think we’ll get there.”

Koch says the plan is to unveil many of the insights and results from The Forge at this summer’s Kelly Hills Unmanned Field Day. That event is set for Aug. 19, and you can get registered for it here.

And, just for fun, here’s a video breakdown of the Pyka Pelican 2:

Your Next Read: How To Navigate Foliar Fungicide Use in a Tight Soybean Market

John Deere-Sentera Tie Up: Here’s What We Know So Far

Fri, 23 May 2025 21:07:32 GMT

John Deere has announced its acquisition of Minnesota-based aerial optics innovator Sentera. Although specific details are few and far between this early in the process, here’s what we know so far:

The two companies have a long history. John Deere was the first enterprise customer Sentera signed onto its system over a decade ago, and the two companies have had an API link in place between Sentera’s drone management software and John Deere’s Operations Center since 2016.
Financial details are not being disclosed. We do know the deal is not subject to any further regulatory or shareholder approvals.
In a similar fashion to the Blue River Technologies and Bear Flag Robotics acquisitions, Sentera will maintain its independence as a free-standing business unit. Once fully integrated into the Deere family, Sentera will operate under the John Deere Intelligent Solutions Group (ISG) framework. Sentera leadership will remain at its St. Paul, Minn., headquarters.
For the time being, no major changes are planned for either company as we head into the heart of the summer crop scouting and spraying season. The two companies anticipate having more details to share about the nuts and bolts of the acquisition this fall.
The two groups are a natural fit. Sentera is aggressively marketing its SmartScripts drone weed mapping program, and the technology is complimentary to John Deere’s Operations Center and its See & Spray and ExactApply application technologies. One driving force behind this deal, Farm Journal is told, is Deere’s motivation to integrate more real-time agronomic data into its Operations Center platform, and Sentera’s aerial data capture capabilities can help make that happen.

(John Deere)

A deal to lift both boats. John Deere has built up a deep bench of artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomous technology expertise within ISG, and Sentera has a long track record of aerial sensing and camera payload innovation. Considering how many cameras and sensors are included from the factory on new John Deere machines and within its Precision Upgrades retrofit kits, there should be a healthy cross pollination of sensor and camera innovation between Urbandale, Iowa, (where ISG is based) and St. Paul, Minn.
Sentera can help make See & Spray even better. SmartScripts uses drone-based imaging to scan a field and build a weed pressure map which is then loaded onto the sprayer’s in-cab computer. Now the sprayer operator can see exactly where weeds are in the field and focus their spraying efforts there first. There’s also a logistical and planning aspect to SmartScripts: by knowing exactly how many weeds are present in the field, and even what type of weeds are there, an adept operator can have the right active ingredients premixed and the exact amount needed loaded into the tank or staged nearby in a tender truck to keep that sprayer running all day long.

“Farming is becoming a very sensor and data-centric business, and in our opinion, there isn’t anyone doing it at broad scale today better than John Deere,” says Eric Taipale, chief technology officer, Sentera. “The way we can bring these data-driven insights and improve grower outcomes — it’s just what we’ve always been about. It’s what John Deere is all about. There’s such a great mesh between the two cultures, the objectives and the mission of the two organizations.”

Joseph Liefer, global technology marketing lead at John Deere, adds, “We’re excited about how this complements our existing portfolio with See & Spray, and then not just that (product). Now a farmer with an individual nozzle-controlled sprayer from any manufacturer can also leverage this technology. A drone can fly their field, generate a weed map, turn it into a prescription in Operations Center and the machine can go execute the plan. From an ag retailer standpoint, that might have a mixed fleet, and this gives them more tools in the toolbox to do targeted application for growers and help them save on herbicide. We view this deal as complementary to our overall tech strategy.”

Your Next Read: MAHA Report’s Surprising Stance on Glyphosate, Atrazine Explained

John Deere Challenge: Watch a New York Tech Journalist Farm 20 Acres of Corn for $20 Profit

Fri, 18 Apr 2025 13:52:49 GMT

You might recall this viral stunt from when it was announced last spring: John Deere and tech influencer David Cogen (@TheUnlockr) joined forces to set the New York-based journalist up as a row crop farmer for an entire growing season. Using 20 acres of prime Iowa farmland, Cogen’s mission was to find out if he could accomplish what farmers must achieve to put food on America’s dinner tables: turn planted crops into cold, hard cash.

Unlike most farmers, though, Cogen was basically given every cheat code in the game: He had guidance from John Deere experts throughout the crop journey, all of the latest John Deere equipment with all the tech bells-and-whistles any farmer could dream for —not to mention a blank check for seed, crop inputs, fuel and labor.

Cogen began by ordering up soil tests and custom fertilizer applications. Then he flew back to Iowa to complete the spring tillage pass and seed the field. Next came another trip to spray weeds post-emergence with Deere’s See & Spray smart application system before returning in the fall to harvest the finished grain and haul it down to the local ethanol processing plant.

Along the way Cogen learned a handful of lessons any seasoned farmer already knows all too well:

The weather never seems to do what you want it to do, when you want it to do it. That’s farming.
You have to eradicate weeds or they will rob your yields and destroy your profits.
Variation is the enemy, it’s all about consistent production and harvesting at the precise moisture level and timing.
A dry late-summer and early-fall is a factor you can’t control but it can cost you real dollars on your final yield. The corn will dry down too fast in the field if you don’t get it off on time, so in this case, water is truly money when it comes to corn and soybean farming.

In the end, Cogen’s field averaged 209 bushels per acre and produced just over 3,000 total bushels of corn, which equates to over 200,000 lb.

His total expenses for the year (land costs, seed, fertilizer and “other”) totaled $16,456, while his total revenues for the 19.24 total acres of corn harvested was $16,478.

Don’t adjust your monitor. Yes, you read that right.

The New York tech editor farmed all year long and only brought home $22 in total profit. It just goes to show, turning a profit on only 20 acres is incredibly hard to do. Small acre farmers deserve just as much respect as the big boys.

“Honestly, I hope that like myself, that this has opened your eyes into what it actually takes to farm,” Cogen says at the end of the video. “Just all of the work that goes into it and you can have a new appreciation for farming and for farmers.

Your Next Read: Farmer Finds A Silver Bullet For High Corn Yields

Yamaha Ag Q&A: When Can Growers Buy Farm Robots? North America Rollout Explained

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 12:59:00 GMT

Yamaha is a Japanese legacy automotive and motor sports giant known the world over, but many aren’t aware that the company also has a long and storied history in ag tech.

Yamaha’s R-Max gas-powered spray helicopter launched in Japan in the 1990s, making it one of the first unmanned aerial application vehicles on the market for applying crop protection products to growing crops. FAZER-R was its next iteration of spray drones, and the company says it has over 2,800 units of both R-MAX and FAZER remote controlled spray helicopters deployed today with farmers around the world.

In late January, the manufacturer announced the launch of Yamaha Agriculture , a new U.S.-based company that will focus on delivering autonomous equipment and AI-powered digital solutions. The company came together as a single business unit as a result of strategic acquisitions of robotics and AI focused startups Robotics Plus and The Yield.

We recently connected with Nolan Paul, who was named CEO of the relatively-new ag tech division, to learn more about the venture as it gets a footing established on the West Coast. Previously Paul was Head of R&D Strategy and Emerging Technology for Driscoll’s, the global market leader in production of fresh berries.

Farm Journal (FJ): How long of a timeline do you anticipate until commercialized robotics solutions are available for growers to purchase?

Nolan Paul (NP): Robotics Plus’ Prospr vehicles are already deployed with customers and distributors in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.

FJ: What type of specific use cases do you envision bringing to market that will leverage advanced data analytics and AI?

NP: A multitude of use cases with time to market based on the degree of technical difficulty. We already offer weather-driven predictions to customers in the form of yield forecasts and harvest and spray timing. The next set of use cases will be variable rate spray applications based on real-time sensing on the vehicle (e.g., spray volumes based on canopy density).

(Yamaha Agriculture)

FJ: How do you envision Yamaha’s robotic solutions being marketed/sold to growers?

NP: Robotics Plus already has distributor partners in the U.S. and Australia/New Zealand. However, it’s important for Yamaha to maintain direct relationships with growers, especially our larger customers, to optimize customer success and develop our product roadmap. Regarding our monetization approach, we believe growers should purchase our hardware solutions the same way they prefer to purchase the rest of their machinery. Some prefer to buy outright. Others prefer a financing or lease option. We remain open to alternative monetization options if it makes life easier for the grower.

FJ: Where will the new division Yamaha Agriculture be based? How many employees will make up the division?

NP: Yamaha Agriculture is a U.S.-incorporated business with subsidiaries in Australia and New Zealand. Our headquarters is in the Bay Area as it provides easy access to Tokyo, Sydney and Auckland. We also have local offices in Napa, Calif., and Wenatchee, Wash., along with team members based up and down the West Coast. Currently, Yamaha Agriculture has approximately 175 employees.

FJ: Ag technologies that solve a specific problem for the farmer seem to be the solutions that are adopted by American farmers. Are there any specific issues that your technology will be able to solve for growers?

NP: Currently spraying and weed control with our Prospr vehicle. However, it’s a modular platform, so the product roadmap includes several implements such as mowing and under-row cultivation. Our goal isn’t to develop implements from scratch. We are partnering with implement companies to integrate their tools on Prospr.

Separately, we also offer yield predictions and crop recommendations through our acquisition of The Yield. These two capabilities lay the foundation for increased closed-loop opportunities (actionable insights) with a focus on reducing block-level variability.

FJ: Do you have any concerns with the new U.S. administration’s trade policies considering Yamaha Agriculture is targeting the U.S. as a primary market for your technology?

NP: Yamaha sells a lot of products in the United States, ranging from motorcycles to outboard motors, ATVs and golf cars. As a result, we will take guidance from our broader organization and implement a strategy that is most effective for Yamaha Agriculture and our customers.

Your Next Read: What Technologies Are Farms Using and Why?

John Deere Details Model Year 2026 Updates, New Machine Capabilities and Technology Features

Thu, 27 Feb 2025 18:42:29 GMT

John Deere announces a suite of equipment and technology upgrades and new features across its portfolio of machines. Some of the updates are exclusive to model year 2026 machines, and some are available as retrofit options or upgrades for new and/or older John Deere machines.

Next Generation Perception System For Autonomous Tillage
John Deere is releasing its autonomy Precision Upgrades kit for select tractor models that brings autonomy to tillage work. The system is available as a Precision Upgrades kit for model year 2022 and newer 9R and 9RX tractors and model year 2020.5 and newer 8R and 8RX tractors. Select model year 2025 John Deere tractors are autonomy ready from the factory.

RELATED: John Deere Introducing Next Generation Perception Autonomy Kits

To add autonomy to the tillage tool, retrofit kits are available for 2017 and newer John Deere tillage implements with additional lighting and the StarFire receiver mast and harnessing. The autonomy ready solutions are factory installed in base models for select MY25 tillage tools.

Combine Improvements
For model year 2026, the additions include a new three-piece CAM hinge draper reel with dense pack fingers and a new CF 18 30 corn head, which John Deere says is the industry’s first folding corn head with 18" rows and 30" spacing.

John Deere is also announcing several enhancements to its model year 2026 combines:

The Harvest Settings Automation feature will now include an out-of-crop settings adjustment that engages when the combine is passing through previously harvested areas of the field. Now the feature supports wheat, barely, canola, soybean, corn and rice crops.

Predictive Ground Speed Automation is being updated with a new feature that helps operators manage unique field terrains such as waterways, ditches or terraces. Weed detection sensing is also being added. There will be new functionality incorporated into John Deere Operations Center that will use crop-type data from planting and satellite imagery to ensure all eligible combines have the essential harvest automation files necessary to increase productivity. Predictive Ground Speed Automation supports wheat, barley, canola, soybean, corn, peas, edible beans and lentils.

AutoTrac Turn Automation is being updated to automate the raising and lowering of the combine head for hands-free turning, and a new auto-unload camera with supporting hardware and software is available to help consistently fill grain carts and possibly reduce in-field spills.

(Dan Videtich/John Deere)

John Deere also announced a handful of harvest settings updates available in Operations Center, including grain harvest weight sharing and Grain Sensing with HarvestLab 3000 available now for all model year 2025 and newer X9, S7 and T6 combines.

And physical updates to model year 2026 machines include a new instructor seat in all models and a dual USB-C fast charging module in the cab. And the JD Link Boost satellite connectivity module is available for install on eligible combine models to maintain connectivity during harvest.

Sprayer Updates
John Deere says these updates were developed to give farmers cleaner fields that have less weed competition, leading to more yield potential.

See & Spray has new variable rate capabilities that can unlock precise applications and significant product savings in later-season fungicide and desiccant applications, preharvest passes and more, according to John Deere. Farmers can also now see the percentage of biomass each perception camera detects throughout the field. See & Spray Variable Rate capabilities will require a G5 or G5Plus CommandCenter display.

See & Spray Select is now available from the factory on model year 2026 John Deere 400 and 600 series sprayers with 90', 100' or 120' steel booms. See & Spray Select also will be available as a Precision Upgrades kit for model year 2018 and newer John Deere sprayers with ExactApply and a 120' steel boom.

See & Spray Premium is adding new boom sizes and is now available on Hagie STS20 sprayers. See & Spray Premium is compatible with 90', 100' or 120' booms.

(Mel Koltai/John Deere)

Beyond the See & Spray updates, John Deere also has two new AutoTrac options for sprayers:

AutoTrac Turn Automation (ATTA) is now compatible with John Deere 400 and 600 series self-propelled sprayers, 800R floaters, and Hagie STS12, STS16 and STS20 sprayers, model year 2022 and newer. The new feature is also included with Automation 4.0 on Gen4 displays and the G5 Advanced license for machines that have a G5 display.

AutoTrac Vision 2.0 is a new technology that ensures sprayer wheels remain centered within each crop row, and it boasts a maximum speed of 22 mph, slope performance of up to 6 degrees, and the ability to navigate curves with a radius of just 50 meters. AutoTrac Vision 2.0 is available on model year 2026 John Deere sprayers as a factory option.

John Deere is also introducing ExactApply Variable Rate capabilities – including multi-rate across the boom with AutoSelect Pulsing (and A+B pulse width modulation nozzle switching). Sprayer operators can now vary multiple application rates across the entire boom, up to 11 unique sections, leading to more precise product placement. Operators also can use increased rate ranges for variable rate prescriptions and curve compensation. This technology is available as a software update for model year 2023 to 2025 sprayers, and model year 2026 will come factory installed with updated software features and functionalities.

Planter Updates
John Deere announced four new planter updates:

A new rate controller, the John Deere Rate Controller 3, with the option to control and apply two liquid and/or anhydrous ammonia (NH3) products simultaneously across up to 16 sections. This can help farmers decrease the number of trips through the field while getting the same application work completed. John Deere says the new rate controller is suitable for a variety of row crops, ranches, high-value crops and even on golf courses.

Rate Controller 3 also features a new rate controller app that is available within the John Deere display menu. The rate controller app is fully compatible with Gen 4 v2 and G5 displays.

(Michael J Newell/John Deere)

John Deere says the new app will give farmers a similar experience as operating a self-propelled sprayer with a controller with a built-in base from the factory. This means farmers can now monitor their planter and rate controller functions on one screen on the display and execute easy adjustments, according to John Deere.

The new rate controller module also has a new harness and 48-pin connector, which expands the compatibility with third-party equipment.

Seed-Level Sensing provides farmers with a more accurate look at the level of seed remaining in the tank. It places a sensor in the tank that can measure the volume of seed left in the tank, which is then provided to the operator in the cab and the John Deere Operations Center. This feature is available on model year 2026 planters or as a Precision Upgrades kit for certain models back to model year 2022.

Fertilizer-Level Sensing is also new and it is similar to seed-level sensing, providing the operator with better information on the fertilizer level remaining in the tank. It is an external manifold that includes two pressure sensors, which are used to calculate both the liquid density as well as the volume remaining in the tank. This update is available on model year 2026 planters and is also a Precision Upgrades kit that can be added to machines that are model year 2022 and newer.

Active Vacuum Automation is available on model year 2026 planters with electric drives and the SeedStar 5 Monitoring System. This feature looks in real time at singulation and automatically adjusts the vacuum, helping to prevent skips and doubles.

To determine which new features and updates are available for existing machines or only on model year 2026 new machines, contact your local John Deere dealer.

Your Next Read: A Perfect Storm Is Driving Up New and Used Tractor Prices

Dalton Dilldine: Next-Generation Producer Follows in His Father's Footsteps

Wed, 19 Feb 2025 14:38:25 GMT

Fourth-generation Arkansas farmer Dalton Dilldine always dreamed of farming and following in his father’s footsteps.

“I knew I wanted to farm and really couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” he says.

But Dilldine’s dad unexpectedly passed away when he was a senior in high school with a limited succession plan in place — leaving him with the choice to take over the operation, start his own farm or go to college.

He chose all three.

“I would go to school and come home every weekend. After I graduated, I started taking over the whole operation and really tried to do things that my father would be proud of - and that I could be proud for myself. I just tried to do my best every day.”

Expanding With Innovation
Located in the Delta of Arkansas, he co-managed Half Moon Farm with his mother until 2010 when he went on his own, creating Mezza Luna Farms. Now, Dilldine grows 6,000 acres of cotton, soybeans, wheat, corn and rice. Of those acres, 2,700 are owned and the rest rented. The farm also has four full-time employees and several H-2A workers.

His strategy for the operation is continuous improvement with a focus on profitability.

“One of my big goals is to just try to be efficient, whatever can be done. We use technology and buy bigger equipment to be able to do more with less,” he says. “Just finding people who want to work on our farm and want to help and understand how a farm works has been a big help for us.”

He also pushes his yields, working with NRCS on conservation programs and quickly adapting to new technology.

“We have moisture sensors in our fields that will tell me the optimal time to start and turn off irrigation. There’s automation in most of our wells, too. I can start them with my phone and turn them off. They’ll tell me if something’s going on,” he explains. “Our equipment with GPUs are an asset to see what’s going on in the field from my office. That’s been a huge blessing.”

Dilldine also purchased a commercial grain entity during the 2022 harvest season amid a drought that was leading to significant decreases in basis due to low river levels.

“It’s about 750,000 bushel storage. Right now, we can use about 600,000 of that capability,” he says. “I can dump trucks in about six minutes, and I can load them out in about 12 - which is pretty fast for a private grain facility.”

Adversity Strikes Twice
On top of losing his father, the beginning of Dilldine’s farming career was made even more challenging when he suffered a major injury that crushed two vertebrae in his back.

“I had a long road of recovery right in the beginning of farming,” he remembers. “I had to do a whole lot of talking on the phone and teaching somebody else how to run that sprayer. It was a lot to deal with.”

But he learned a valuable lesson that has served him well on the farm.

“I taught myself to be a whole lot more patient and to not be wide open all the time,” he says.

Dilldine’s wife, Skiver, who also assists on the farm when she’s not busy as a nurse practitioner, says she couldn’t be prouder of his progress.

“He didn’t have a mentor in his younger years to kind of guide him through some of the hard farming lessons, and he’s learned those on his own with the help of others. He’s just really put in a lot of legwork, a lot of tears and blood, and just really powered through all the adversities to come out on top,” she says.

Despite these challenges, Dilldine says he’s reached many of his farming goals - and others can too.

“I want young farmers to be aware that you can do it. It’s not impossible as often as it feels like,” he adds.

John Deere Introducing Next Generation Perception Autonomy Kits

Mon, 06 Jan 2025 20:46:44 GMT

John Deere is taking a step forward in autonomy and the technology retrofit market.

Chief Technology Officer Jahmy Hindman describes the effort as “real purpose, real autonomy”. He says the manufacturer is responding to the ongoing labor crunch that is causing headaches across the agriculture industry both domestically and abroad.

To help its users continue to farm with less reliance on human labor, John Deere has announced a suite of new retrofit autonomy kits for tractors and tillage implements, orchard sprayers, and even for the commercial landscape and construction equipment segments.

The kits feature redesigned camera arrays and rugged NVIDIA processing units paired with Blue River Technology’s machine learning algorithms, enabling John Deere machines to autonomously mimic how a human operator would react in the driver’s seat, without anyone actually sitting in the driver’s seat.

Let’s dive in and learn more about what John Deere is launching this week at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What’s New for Tractors?
John Deere and its integrated Blue River Technologies team have re-architected what it is calling its Next Generation Perception System autonomy retrofit kits. The kits are made for model year 2022 and newer 9R and 9RX tractors, and model year 20.5 and newer 8R and 8RX tractors. Also coming from John Deere is autonomy on its 5ML Series tractors.

To go along with its autonomous tractor kits, there are retrofit kits that outfit select 2017 and newer John Deere tillage implements with additional lighting, a GPS receiver mast, and harnessing for fully autonomous tiling. These autonomy ready features are factory installed as a base package for select model year 2025 tillage tools. Today, the system is only compatible with John Deere tillage implements with the autonomy kits installed, but in the future Deere is working towards compatibility with third-party tillage tools.

The new autonomy kits are made for model year 2022 and newer 9R and 9RX tractors , and model year 20.5 and newer 8R and 8RX tractors, as well as select John Deere tillage tools.

(Photos courtesy of John Deere)

Both autonomy kits will be sold within John Deere’s Precision Upgrades product segment, which the company re-branded in 2023. So far, the kits have been field tested across thousands of acres of cropland. John Deere representatives anticipate the kits will one day be compatible with planting, harvesting, and broad acre application machines. But today, autonomous field tillage is the first domino to fall.

“This expands our autonomous capabilities dramatically,” says Willy Pell, CEO, Blue River Technologies. “Farmers should not have to buy a new tractor to experience autonomy.

Pell adds the kits were designed with ease of installation in mind, especially for tractors and implements that come autonomy ready from the factory.

Let’s dive deeper into some of the components that enable autonomous capabilities within the Next Generation Perception Kits.

Let’s start with the kit’s redesigned camera arrays, which are installed onto the top of a compatible tractor model’s cab and wired into the control module. Within that new camera array are 16 stereo cameras that shoot continuously at triple overlap, giving the system a 360-degree field of vision around the tractor with plenty of redundancy for sensing crops, obstacles, potential humans and other hazards in the field.

What those cameras “see” is processed on ruggedized NVIDIA Jetson GPUs that can withstand temperatures down to -40 degrees F. With the cameras operating as the eyes of the system, the Jetson units serve as the brains and connective tissue, using edge processing to read, react, and fire off commands to the machine just as a human operator would.

Farmers that experienced John Deere’s tractor autonomy kits in the past – this version represents the second evolution of the technology since John Deere introduced it in 2022 – told the company they wanted the driver-less machines to cover more acres in a day, or night. John Deere made that happen, increasing speeds 40% to 12 mph with this iteration, and lighting kits have been added on to allow around-the-clock field work.

“We want to meet customers where they’re at today; our customers across the Midwest want to customize their tillage setups with various tools of different sizes and configurations, and we want to make as many of those tools autonomy capable with one system as possible, and that’s what we’ve done with the Generation 2 Perception System,” says Aaron Wells, Engineering and AI Systems, Blue River Technologies. “This is real autonomy that I can set, forget, and run in the field or monitor using John Deere Operations Center Mobile.”

Local John Deere dealers will have a limited number of kits available for 2025 with a full launch tabbed for 2026.

Orchard tractors and sprayers
The Next Generation Perception System kit has been slightly tweaked for permanent orchard crop growers. Those growers generally use lower horsepower machines with narrower footprints to complete tasks between trellised rows of grapes, tree nuts, and other orchard crops like apples.

In California’s massive specialty crop industry, John Deere says that over 50% of machine operator jobs posted by farming operations are going unfilled. John Deere believes its autonomy kits can lessen that reliance on seasonal labor and help farmers hit tight production windows in order to maximize yields.

The Next Generation Perception kit for orchard tractors and sprayers features fewer camera arrays than the row crop kit but adds an integrated LiDAR sensor to 3D image tree canopies and orchard trellising in real-time.

(Photos courtesy of John Deere)

Whether we’re talking about the large tractor autonomy kits or the orchard tractor-sprayer kit, the systems share many common components. Rather than needing 16 stereo cameras, the autonomous orchard tractor kit deploys seven cameras alongside three LiDAR sensors. The LiDAR sensors provide a real-time 3D image of vine and orchard crops as the tractor moves around the orchard, giving the machine the ability to tell the pull-behind sprayer implement where to apply and where not to apply.

The 5ML Specialty Tractor, along with the key Precision Essentials technology that will enable autonomy, JDLink Modem, StarFire Receiver, G5 Display, and John Deere Operations Center are all available today, with the autonomy kit being available in limited quantities in 2026.

“We’ve developed this incredible second-generation technology that allows us to scale across different crops and new industries,” says Igino Cafiero, CEO and founder, Bear Flag Robotics. John Deere acquired Bear Flag in 2021 for $250 million.

Something for your side hustle?
I have no data to back this up, but I would guess there might be some row crop farmers out there that might own commercial landscaping, construction, or excavation businesses in addition to farming full time.

For the commercial landscape segment, John Deere has extended its next Generation Perception kit to automate a new green and yellow autonomous battery electric zero-turn mower.

This autonomous battery powered commercial lawn mower remains in the concept stage today but John Deere anticipates it being available for landscape professionals in the future.

(Photos courtesy of John Deere)

While still in the concept stage of development, the commercial mower can be programmed to autonomously cut common professional landscaping patterns while its operator monitors the machine from nearby with what looks and feels like a beefed-up Xbox controller. There is also a rear standing deck that can be flipped down, with dedicated operator controls on the machine, in case the operator feels like hopping onboard and steering the mower.

And for the construction world, John Deere has applied the next Generation perception kit to create a driverless commercial dump truck. The truck can autonomously move material from Point A to Point B and even know exactly where it needs to dump its load. Site workers can use the John Deere Operations Center to define ideal routes and start, stop, and unload the giant diesel-powered machines from outside of the cab.

Again, like their row crop and specialty crop farming brethren, commercial landscape and construction firms are also feeling the squeeze of the labor shortage.

“There’s no better story, I think, than using technology for the benefit of humanity. It is our purpose and what pulls all of this together,” Hindman says. “Our number one mission in developing these kits is to help reduce the dependency on unskilled labor. We think autonomy is a significant answer to solving that dilemma for our customers.”

To learn more about the Next Generation Perception System head to Deere.com/autonomy

Your Next Read – Ag Tech and Machinery Trends to Track for 2025.

A Farmer Can Dream, Right? Tesla Robots As the Farm Labor Force of the Future?

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 18:57:14 GMT

With a visual form ripped straight from a skin-crawl inducing robot thriller, Tesla’s new AI-bot, Optimus, is eliciting strong reactions from tech advocates and flip-phone touting technophobes.

Let’s indulge our imaginations for just a second and imagine how a farmer could put one of Musk’s $20,000 helper robots to work around the family farm in, say, the year 2040. I use 2040 because, even though the prototypes in the video below look awesome, it turns out the AI behind it needs more work before any farmer would feel safe setting a squad of them loose on the farm.

Our own Clinton Griffiths was also inspired by Optimus’ unveiling. In his upcoming column in the November issue of Farm Journal, Clinton gets right to the heart of the issue, and that’s whether the bots will pan out on the farm?

The real test, he writes, “will be whether it can keep its glossy finish motoring along regardless of whether or not the field is mud-free.”

I couldn’t agree more, Clinton. Serving up fancy drinks during an unveiling party on a glitzy Hollywood film studio lot is one thing. Standing up to all the dust and heat and tough conditions of your average farm or ranch is a different beast altogether.

In that vein, we offer up the following farm chore list Optimus can take over from here on out.

No, seriously Opti, you don’t need our permission. Just go ahead and take care of these few little things every single day for the rest of time, and we’ll be off, I don’t know, fishing at the lake with the kids, rocking on the front porch, or something.

Farm equipment maintenance tech
Director of crop protection jug disposal
Backpack spraying around-the-clock weed warrior
Chief grain bin inspector
Head ladder climber
Irrigation pivot inspector general
Head high in July crop scout
Pig loader and unloader extraordinaire
Master bottle mixer and calf feeder

Now that you’ve read my list, I’m curious how you would use a robot that walks, talks and moves like a real human (and never gets tired, bored or spends 20 minutes staring at its phone) on your farm? or click

Share your robot wish list by clicking the green “Respond Here” button or click here .

Your Next Read: As the Wizard of Yield, Ken Ferrie Reveals His Secrets on Unscripted

Mineral: Applying Silicon Valley ‘Superpowers’ To Agriculture

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 01:13:27 GMT

For the past five years, the team at Mineral have been working inside X, the moonshot factory of Alphabet (Google’s parent company).

Today, Mineral graduates as the business is made a standalone company within Alphabet.

What’s the first thing to come from Mineral to the farm?

The company has been working through established ag partners (more than a dozen currently) to develop tools with machine learning, artificial intelligence, robotics and geospatial technologies.

“We are hoping to bring a new perspective as an outsider by partnering with those who have deep expertise as existing players in the industry,” says Mineral CEO Elliott Grant. “If we are successful, we will help build a fundamental step change in capabilities with a set of tools that are incredibly powerful.”

Grant shares Mineral wants to apply its expertise a large scale, while respecting the details and anomalies inherent in agriculture. Farmers won’t buy technologies direct from Mineral, but the company’s goal is to have its tools embedded in the inputs, equipment and decision-making tools used by farmers.

“Every farm looks a little different, and every plant looks a little different. We know the models we build have to work across 100,000 different environments, but our strength is in steadily investing in the diversity of data. Technology can handle all these situations when the model built are robust and are built to handle the complexity and analyze the diversity of data in agriculture. It’s our job to bring the user along the ride.”

He says the first product a Mineral partner is likely to bring to market will be around weed detection tools. The team at Mineral says their work spans scouting, identification, mapping, and application.

“One of the areas we’re already seeing a lot of demand for our partners is our ability to identify and model weeds,” says Greg Chiocco, Mineral growth lead. “It’s an area we spend a lot of time and energy on as the implications of weed modeling are endless.”

The data Mineral is collecting is another of its core competencies.

With its work, Mineral has developed an image database of more than 17 crops in every stage of growth in multiple environments. It’s being used for modeling and can be used in many projects with partners.

“Much like an Android model, we aren’t one fully closed ecosystem. We have an open ecosystem,” says Mineral Chief Operating Officer Erica Bliss. “We think about how ag is evolving, and it’s not about just one set of tools. We think it’ll take this open approach to tackle to the nuanced and local challenges.”

A visual example of the work Mineral is doing is the rover platform.

The rover is a four-wheeled semi-autonomous platform Mineral has developed over four years. There are multiple configurations of the machine from narrow row configurations to high clearance. The core functionality of the rover is as a data collection machine.

“Think of this as our Google Streetview car,” Grant says. “It’s not a final product. It’s a research tool.”

The rover can collect 1 million image a day to measure characteristics of plants. For example, in one 24-hour period one rover collected nearly 6 million images measuring a dozen plant traits for R&D purposes.

One company Mineral has said its partnering with in the input space is Syngenta.

Another partner in the specialty crop business has yielded multiple projects moving forward.

Driscoll’s has been a partner of Mineral to help it solve two problems: in-field harvest analysis for its berry crops and post-harvest crop condition ratings.

While harvesting strawberries and raspberries comes with challenges on assessing crop condition, a specific technology has been developed to monitor the crop in the field.

“It wasn’t just that we increased the yield harvested, the human experts got better,” says. “They got better insights on yield forecasting so they learned why the machine was making the prediction.”

Grant adds, “It may surprise some people that artificial intelligence isn’t replacing people. Rather, it’s a co-pilot to help decision making by pointing out anomalies.”

The second project illustrates how artificial intelligence is used to assess the conditions of harvested berries including color, size, bruising and more.

This application can be run on a mobile phone. It only requires a blue background and a color key card for calibration.

One focus for the team at Mineral is to make its technology easier to use in the field.

With its partners at Alphabet providing proprietary chips, Mineral is excited to accelerate the use of Edge Computing—meaning there doesn’t have to be a strong, consistent internet connection to run computer applications, collect images, make maps and make decisions.

Grant shares how the devices have gotten smaller and smaller in the past five years.

“Something that can be held in two hands is able to provide stereo imagery, its own lighting, computing power, GPS and power management for the rover,” he says. “It’s getting lighter, cheaper and more powerful every year.”

In fact, they are working to build products for situations without connectivity.

“We shouldn’t assume high bandwidth is available,” he says. “Doing this work on The Edge for the next decade is critical.”

What about other well-known Google technologies?

When asked about geospatial, Grant says the team at Mineral benefits from the work done at its sister company Google Earth. He adds Google Earth has been an amazing tool for researchers and has moved the needle for the GIS system.

“We benefit from generating data from the Google Earth engine and built a layer translated to ag specific with field boundaries, crop types cover crops and tillage,” Grant says.

Mineral has analyzed 10% of the total farmland—which means of the 4 billion acres on Earth for farmland. 450 million acres of farmland are in the Mineral platform.

“Scale is in our DNA, and one our superpowers is scale,” Grant says.

While Google Glass has so far been taken off the shelf for the consumer market for more industrial applications, Grant doesn’t rule it out as a future platform for innovation.

“I think there’s a future in which the interaction isn’t intermediated by a phone. Perhaps it’s headworn. The computing power is there. But if it will be a face worn AR device, I don’t know. But the fundamental tech is there,” he says.

So what’s Mineral’s vision for the future of agriculture?

Grant says, “Five years from now, I would hope the tools we imagine, a machine learning enabled co-pilot for example, is no more remarkable than using Google Maps for navigation.”

EarthOptics, Pattern Ag Combine Forces On Next-Level Soil Data Analytics

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 15:30:04 GMT

EarthOptics is merging with data analytics and predictive modeling firm Pattern Ag. Executives at the newly-formed venture feel the combined company will be better positioned to offer enhanced soil testing and data analysis services.

Todd Martin is one of the founders of EarthOptics and he will assume the chief growth officer role at the merged company. Martin helped launch the startup in 2018 with the aim of providing farmers with better, faster, and more economical field-level soil data than traditional grid soil sampling programs.

The experienced ag industry vet pulls zero punches in stating that precision ag thus far has largely failed farmers with overwhelmingly complex and costly-to-collect data sets siloed in walled off platforms devoid of revenue-generating insights. It is his belief that combining with Pattern Ag positions EarthOptics to rise up and deliver more ROI for its farmers.

“The newly merged EarthOptics, when it’s EarthOptics plus Pattern Ag, is going to be able to deliver for farmers like never before,” Martin states. “We can replace their current soil testing regime and - for about the same price as two and a half acre grid sampling for variable-rate fertilizer - give them a prescriptive tillage recommendation and variable-rate fertilization data down to the best resolution that is currently possible. And now we can combine that with the biological and soil DNA data from Pattern Ag and tell them all about disease expectations in their soil, and about pest expectations.”

EarthOptics’ technology includes two and soon-to-be-released three spectrum analyzing sensor systems - deployed via tech-outfitted side-by-side UTVs that local service providers run across acres throughout the Midwest - all with the aim of providing farmers with detailed soil maps and actionable variable rate fertility insights. Martin says this boots-on-the-ground approach is what defines EarthOptics. The data provided includes soil type, moisture, disease and pest predictions, and more.

EarthOptics also says it can help farmers with climate-related programs by measuring carbon in the soil and providing tools to assess and report data that measures carbon intensity and field emissions.

“We’ll help farmers that want to enroll in climate programs and look at their carbon intensity scores or their field emissions, and sometimes we’ll be able to utilize satellites for some of that,” Martin explains. “But when it comes to soil, we believe you’ve got to get your hands dirty. You’re going to have to be in the field. You cannot use satellite technology, no matter what anybody says, it just does not exist to do the type of analysis and data gathering that we can do in the field.”

The two companies plan to unify under the EarthOptics brand name. Other considerations like branding colors and a logo to represent the newly combined company will be worked out soon as executives from both groups come together and pencil out the venture’s go-forward strategy.

Want to learn more about this new soil data partnership? Study up on all of the publicly released details here.

Your Next Read: Three Final Destinations For Mineral’s Tech And Patents Named

Inside InnerPlant’s Farmer-Led Investment Run and Why It’s Better Than Traditional VC

Thu, 08 Aug 2024 15:34:02 GMT

InnerPlant, a seed technology startup with a transgenic, early stress alerting seed trait in soybeans, recently raised $30 million in Series B funding. About half of the funds came from a group of farmer-investors headed by Coutts Agro. Saskatchewan grain farmer Matt Coutts is Coutts Agro’s Chief Investment Officer.

How did InnerPlant set itself apart?

Coutts’ experience with InnerPlant thus far has been unique and a refreshing departure from the typical venture capital funding cycle, he says.

The company was not the least bit shy about trekking up to Canada’s vast western plains and putting boots-on-the-ground to breath the fresh prairie air and take in his operation to gather how the two could potentially work together. And, funny enough, it all literally got off the ground by Coutts filling out one of those online “Contact Us” forms.

That’s one lesson Coutts has picked up from his relationship with InnerPlant that he wants to share with other farmers: don’t be shy about going online, filling out those forms and throwing your hat in the ring if it seems like something that would be a good fit. It might seem like a futile exercise at the time, and that nobody will respond, but you’ll never truly know until you give it a go.

“We’ve trialed so many different products and met with so many different companies,” Coutts adds. “InnerPlant has shown us a much different level of dedication to farmers, at least that I see. Shelly and her entire team were engaged right from the start, coming up to the farm and delivering the pitch right here in one of our barns. It’s hard to find companies as farmer committed as InnerPlant.”

What did InnerPlant learn from working with farmer-investors?

For InnerPlant CEO Shely Aronov, her journey with Coutts and his group cemented a strong conviction in working with farmer-led investment groups over traditional venture capital firms. She believes the shift helped accelerate InnerPlant’s journey from startup to a “real company with customer-centric values.”

“We have the retailers and growers engaged, and we have a technology that is meaningful and moves the needle. Now we must work with farmers to get the point price right, because this is not the time for expensive products,” Aronov says.

Over the last handful of months, InnerPlant has undertaken a pilot program with Illinois-based retailer Growmark FS’ Sentinel Plots to ground truth its technology. Soon you will start to notice the company launching its futuristic seeds with select farms in Illinois and Iowa as it fires up its technology and starts to “scale up”.

“We’re building a team of agronomists and crop specialists in the Midwest right now to support the rollout,” Aronov says, noting its technology remains most effective “with the help of an agronomist.”

Another thing she has learned is if you want to be successful with ag tech, you need to be on the ground and connected to your potential customers.

“We have to train the trainers, and they have to train the farmers, and in order to make that happen, we need to be there alongside them,” Aronov adds.

Why are farmers attracted to InnerPlant?

InnerPlant soybeans emit different wavelengths of light if they are stressed, hinting at possible disease pressure in the field.

(InnerPlant)

“It gets us a data layer into our crops that we don’t have today,” Coutts says. “Being able to manage stress days and weeks ahead is a game changer. If you’re reacting to plant disease you can already see, you’re too late. Of course, you’re hoping that it’s not that bad, but at that point you are probably way behind the ball.”

Coutts and his family oversee 120,000-plus acres of productive, cereal-producing cropland in Saskatchewan, Canada. The group grows lentils, canola, and wheat.

Once a farmer hits that type of acreage level, technology must return profits rather quickly to be valuable, he says. The other side of the coin is, that type of acreage also paints a big, shiny red target on your back at many technology companies. They see that acreage and the little dollar signs start dancing around in their heads before they’ve even pulled up to the farmgate.

According to Ag Funder News, the rest of the funding outside of what Coutts Agro put in came from climate investor Systemiq Capital as well as Deere and Company and Bison Ventures.

What is InnerPlant technology?

InnerPlant’s seed traits signal plant stress – the signals will be able to be picked up optically by satellites once the seeds are widely distributed. For now, the company is using stationary detection towers to scan the invisibly fluorescing plants.

To get there a transgenic gene is edited, or inserted, into the soybean plant’s genome – like inserting a new line of code into a computer program. This enables optic scanners to see what our human eyes cannot: where stress is taking hold in a farmer’s field at a plant-by-plant level.

The plant data is then correlated to areas of the field via the companies’ new CropVoice software program and can pick up stressed plants within one or two days of the initial infection, Aronov adds.

Previous InnerPlant coverage:

InnerPlant - Tech That Visualizes Plant Stress - Names Germplasm Partner

GrowMark To Pilot InnerPlant’s Fluorescent Soybeans

Plants That Talk: Coming Soon To A Field Near You

Landus’ Secret Weapon: Military Grade AI Tech Connects Farm Data Dots

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 19:35:26 GMT

Farmers and agronomists today are virtually drowning in data, but one Midwest cooperative has a new secret weapon up its sleeve.

Landus (Des Moines, Iowa) has seemingly struck digital farm data gold and, as with all things Landus of late, farmers themselves look to be the big winners here.

Landus and American invention company Tesseract Ventures have joined forces to bring military-grade, predictive data analysis straight from the high-tech battlefield of today to a new digital decision support platform for farmers and Landus agronomists. The cooperative is calling its new software offering Synthesis.

What is Synthesis?

Synthesis automates the collection and combination of data across an incredibly wide swath of sources – everything from satellites and drones to on-farm sensors, weather stations, and even disparate farm machinery brands.

The Synthesis system leverages algorithms originally designed for advanced military intelligence applications to literally synthesize all the relevant available data for a select field or operation into three different modules (Plan, Perform, and Prove) that farmers and their agronomists can use to make digital twins, or virtual simulations, of their fields.

By using these digital twins of their real-life fields, the farm management process goes from an inexact, multiple-variable guessing game to a laser-sharp predictive level. There is no more guessing, for example, what would happen to yield and the farmer’s bottom line if Farmer Joe were to put on this generic fungicide at V5. The platform is able to wormhole its way into the future, visualizing in real-time the impact of various management decisions for the farmer before any action is taken.

“It’s a radical way to reimagine information exchange and how to action it,” says John Boucard, Tesseract CEO. “We are creating and deploying 21st century human machine interfaces that can navigate the past, present, and future – today, we now can visualize the past and the present with real-time and edge data, and then envision future events and their impact before they happen.”

In developing and releasing Synthesis to the greater farm universe, Landus and Tesseract have essentially unlocked one of ag tech’s previously unsolvable quandaries: how to take all these different data layers and previously incompatible file formats, and combine them in a single platform where the farmer can have a complete 360-degree view of everything that is happening as well as everything that could happen in the field?

“Agriculture has great data,” says Matt Carstens, CEO of Landus. “But we have never been able to get it into one spot and then let the farmer analyze the data in real-time to create a digital twin that can visualize virtually any scenario. Now they can go out on the farm and be confident.”

Data visualization details

Having viewed a pilot version of Synthesis during our visit to Landus’ Innovation Connector, the platform’s data visualization capability leaps through the screen and grabs your attention. Many digital platforms lay out data in a two-dimensional, color-coded view across a field, but Synthesis has a unique three-dimensional approach to displaying different areas of the field.

Bear with me, as it’s tough to describe it here in words, but it’s a tiered, graphical representation of your real-time and future yield potential: vertically climbing spikes in green are healthy, high-performing areas of the field, while lower-lying, red colored bars show areas in the field with lower yield potential. The software doesn’t break down fields into management zones, it actually visualizes the entire field as one entity.

Farmers and their Landus agronomists can run endless scenarios through the digital twins of their various fields to benchmark management practices and what effect they will have on the crop, kind of like how a high-ranking general in the United States Military would use Tesseract technology to wargame various battlefield scenarios before finalizing a mission plan.

The digital platform today remains in development, but the partners are getting very close to releasing the first iteration, and several Landus farmers have been involved in field tests. Illinois farmer Kevin Kennedy is one of a handful that have been granted early access to the Synthesis. He is convinced Synthesis will be a seismic leap forward in farm management information system innovation.

“Having a platform that I can bring all of the different types of data sources into one centralized location, it gives me the foundation I need to use AI toolsets to build these really detailed analyses around so many different scenarios in production,” he says. “We’ve never been able to have enough of our data in one location and have it in a format that we can access and do this type of predictive analysis.”

Leveling the data playing field for farmers

Landus’ SkyScout drone-enabled scouting service is one such data platform that smoothly integrates into the Synthesis platform. Instead of having to log in and run analysis in both platforms, or export huge data sets from one platform into another, all of the data that comes from SkyScout’s flights flows automatically into a linked Synthesis dashboard. The rubber really meets the road where fresh scouting data is combined with the historic field level data that Synthesis also pulls in automatically.

“In Iowa right now a lot of the fields don’t have an average stand, so you’re probably looking at an average crop at best,” Kennedy explains. “This just allows me to have more confidence in my real-time decision-making process.”

According to Boucard, that is exactly what Tesseract set out to do when it started ideating what could happen if it placed its AI-based military wargaming technology in the hands of Midwestern farmers: provide an instant common operating picture for farmers and agronomists to use to immerse themselves in the data and make critical decisions really fast, and really accurately.

“To be able to unlock the power of that farmer-agronomist collaboration and let the farmer share that data intelligently with whomever it makes sense to share it with – the farmer should own all their own data, so we’re giving them the power now,” he says. “That will force multiply and create a market that’s truly competitive rather than dominated.”

To learn more about how Synthesis can help you harness the power of past data, current data, and future outlook data and apply an analytical approach to your farm, get in touch with Landus.

Google’s Parent Company Alphabet Disperses Its Ag Tech Subsidiary

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 12:19:13 GMT

Announced earlier today, Mineral, Alphabet’s ag company, will wind down its operations.

“Mineral will no longer be an Alphabet company, and our technology will live on inside of leading agribusinesses where they can have maximum impact,” said Mineral CEO Elliott Grant in a blog post.

Mineral was founded in 2018 as part of X, the moonshot factory of Alphabet, and it had about 100 team members.

What did Mineral develop and build:

• an image database of more than 17 crops in every stage of growth in multiple environments.

• A four-wheeled semi-autonomous rover platform with multiple configurations and the core functionality as a data collection machine.

• in-field harvest analysis and post-harvest crop condition ratings for berry crops in partnership with Driscoll’s

• a geospatial analysis platform that has collected more than 450 million acres of farmland.

• Phenotyping databases and analysis

• And additional machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies.

Here’s a link to previous coverage about Mineral.

Driscoll’s has confirmed it will license the tech it partnered with Mineral to develop.

“Mineral had partnered closely with Driscoll’s - the world’s leading berry company - to develop AI tools to improve crop phenotyping, better forecast yields, optimize quality inspections, and reduce food waste in the supply chain. Some of the technologies we developed have now been transferred to Driscoll’s and will be integrated into their systems to help achieve their sustainability ambitions. Driscoll’s is the first agribusiness to receive Mineral technology, and is a first step towards ensuring that our breakthrough technologies achieve the greatest impact,” Grant said.

In closing he gave an analogy of the company’s name to the how it can be applied as a verb in the agricultural context:

“In soil science, mineralization is the process by which the nutrients in organic matter are released in a form that makes them available to the plants around them. I think this is a fitting metaphor for the new chapter of Mineral - as our technologies will be mobilized into the agriculture ecosystem, with the goal of making it more sustainable, and more resilient.”

Smart Firmer: What Is It, What Can I Do With The Data?

Wed, 17 Apr 2024 17:17:21 GMT

Kentucky farmer Eugene Keeton invented the seed firmer during the 1990s, coming up with the practical innovation with some steel wire and duct tape the WWII vet had in his pickup truck.

The concept is simple yet novel: a thin piece of material attached to the planter closing wheel mount, positioned in the center of the seed trench, responsible for corralling seeds and nestling them seed-to-soil, right into a cozy furrow.

After perfecting his design and selling it locally to his neighbors, Keeton eventually struck a deal with Tremont, Illinois, farmer and serial entrepreneur Gregg Sauder to manufacture and distribute seed firmers throughout North America. Today, Sauder’s former passion project – Precision Planting – still sells a composite seed firmer based around Keeton’s original design, with a few modern twists, of course.

A 2019 farm trial on the Seed Firmer conducted by Precision Planting showed a 3 bushel per acre advantage over planting without a firmer.

Precision Planting took the Keeton Seed Firmer a step further, developing a novel sensing technology – Smart Firmer – that places soil sensing technology (Near Infrared spectrum) deep into the furrow. The firmer’s optics can sense soil moisture and temperature, organic matter, and planting depth, transmitting those data points in real time to the in-cab monitor. Variable rate seeding by soil organic matter is possible when paired with VRT seeding technologies, according to Precision Planting.

Smart Firmer can also be set up with FurrowJet for in-furrow at-plant liquid pop-up applications. And it can transmit real time downforce readings (and adjust on the fly) if linked with Precision Planting’s Smart Depth product.

It represents a fresh spin on an existing technology that bolts on advanced sensors and deploys them in an innovative, useful manner.

How To Use Smart Firmer Data

The data is used by farmers in two-fold: during planting, the data displayed on the tractor monitor (Smart Firmer requires a Gen 3 or Gen 3 20/20 Seed Sense monitor) serves as a visual confirmation of planting into good soil conditions (moisture, temperature) for strong germination.

Soil organic material is also displayed, letting the farmer know if there is too much or too little residue in the furrow.

Since different areas of fields have varying soil types and organic matter, elevation, and drainage rates, it’s helpful to see those real-time metrics as the planter works ground in case it encounters spots that are too dry or too cold for fast, strong seed germination. Oftentimes, the farmer will manipulate planting depths based off these readings.

“By having that adequate soil moisture (confirmation) we can tell if we’re planting too shallow, too deep or if we’re planting in the right location,” Ohio farmer Austin Heil says in a recent Facebook video breaking down his planter tech setup. “It also gives us the opportunity to see what the soil temperature is, and what’s the clean furrow look like? Do we have a lot of trash in there? And then the other thing it gives us is our organic and CEC.”

Once harvest is complete and all the data collected, cleaned and sorted, Smart Firmer data can be considered alongside yield by zone data, elevation, fertility, soil organic matter and aerial imagery data, as well as rainfall/weather data, to gain valuable insights into how to adjust planting for better success next season.

Three’s A Crowd: Hylio Secures FAA Drone Swarm, Night Flight Exemptions

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 19:41:29 GMT

Ag drone outfit Hylio (Houston, Texas) has received an unprecedented “all clear” from the FAA: an exemption allowing the company’s application drones to be “swarmed” or flown in concert with up to three drones controlled by a single operator, as well as allowing spray missions to be flown after sundown.

Why it Matters

Standard U.S. commercial drone regulations set forth under the FAA’s Part 107 certification limit operations to one pilot-in-charge per drone (plus a visual observer) and only flying between sunup and sundown. Chemical application drones are jointly regulated under Part 107 (pilot) as well as FAA 14 CFR Part 137 (service provider). A pesticide applicators license is also required.

Clearly, this development unlocks more efficient and scalable workflows for farm work (one of Hylio’s spray drones can cover up to 50 acres per hour), but it also has additional implications worth exploring.

“It’s precedent setting,” says Arthur Erickson, CEO and cofounder. “Essentially what the FAA does after this is…people can cite Hylio’s first exemption, this one, and be like, because Hylio can do that, we’re showing that we also have the same technical capabilities, therefore we should be able to do that.”

Technology has certainly evolved to the point of enabling autonomous swarms. Erickson says part of the buildup to that was a literal accounting for every single imaginable scenario (good or bad) under the sun.

“That’s redundant radar systems, that’s redundant GPS, that’s redundant IMUs in the flight controller, and redundant hardware to make sure that if anything goes wrong during a flight, there’s another system that can pick up and just make sure the drone does what it needs to do,” he explains. “It’s all about engineering that safety margin into the products and the machines themselves.”

By swarming three of Hylio’s AG-230 spray drones (which can also apply dry dispersible products and cover crop seeds), for example, a skilled operator can now cover 150 acres per hour, which Erickson says is comparable to a large pull-behind sprayer in some cases.

“It’s unlocking the ability for these drones to actually go toe to toe with traditional large equipment, which is what we’ve been waiting for in this industry,” he adds.

Advice for farmers

Judging from the winter farm trade show circuit , it seems clear there are more options available to farmers today when it comes to drone application than perhaps ever before.

Erickson advises interested farmers to do their homework and verify paperwork/licenses before committing big dollars to a drone application service provider.

“You also need to educate yourself on best practices for applying by drone, because what you want to do is make sure you don’t have someone who’s going out there with the drones and cutting corners,” he cautions. “And by that, I mean, most of these guys are making money based on acres per hour.

“Some of these pilots, and this isn’t just with drones, they’ll go out there and they’ll potentially do swaths that are too wide for what the effective swath is. What that can end up doing is, leaving weaker coverage at the edges of those swaths, right? Because there’s not enough overlap and they’re not getting enough droplets across the entire swath.”

What Could the Future Hold?

It’s a question that Erickson encounters often throughout his travels: just how big can application drones get? Can they ever replace conventional self-propelled ground rigs?

“Drones are going to get bigger to a certain point, but then they’re going to level out because beyond that point they become overly cumbersome and expensive,” he says. “You’ll start to see the same economic problems that you see with helicopters, which is they’re way too expensive, the insurance is way too high, they’re dangerous, they’re hard to maintain and repair, and hard to transport.”

Erickson sees the ceiling for capacity coming in around the 1,000-pounds/40-60 gallon per drone mark, eventually.

“Then you’re going to get multiples deployed in a field instead of just one giant, 200-gallon drone,” he says. “I think that’s more practical for manufacturers and the buyers and users themselves.”

Autonomy In Ag Is Firing On All Cylinders Right Now, And It Looks Different Depending On Where You Live

Seed Technology and Evolving Farming Practices Win Against Drought’s Grip

You Can’t Afford to Be Complacent About Tar Spot

7 Technology Trends Ag Retailers Need To Know

Wed, 13 Mar 2024 14:00:00 GMT

Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter. Innovation today ensures an efficient, productive and sustainable tomorrow.

These smart farming trends and example products highlight greater efficiency, maximum yields and environmental stewardship.

1. Selective Spraying
Now, multiple selective spraying systems are available as factory installations and aftermarket options from different manufacturers.

One of the newest offerings is the factory install of John Deere’s See & Spray Premium on Hagie STS sprayers. Two more aftermarket offerings for this year are John Deere’s marketing of its aftermarket Precision Upgrades program and its $25,000 See & Spray dealer-installed option for 2018 and newer sprayers. Also, Trimble has a green-on-green Bilberry smart spray add-on kit. AGCO expects general availability of its One Smart Spray technology, a collaboration with Bosch and BASF, in 2025.

John Deere Announces Tech Focused 2025 Introductions

2. Data Analytics
You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and as data collection continues to grow, analytical tools are making interpretation and actionable insights easier to grasp.

One example is AGMRI Analyze, which will track post-season data analytics including:

Emergence
Nutrient availability
Crop stress
Disease
Hybrid and variety
Weather
Soil
Machine
Crop input product performance

Intelinair will continue to offer its in-season analytics platform, AGMRI Insights, allowing for full-season crop management.

Intelinair Introduces Postseason Data Analytics Suite

3. More Connectivity
Deere & Company announced an agreement with SpaceX to provide Starlink network satellite communications (SATCOM) service to farmers. Utilizing the Starlink network, this solution will allow farmers facing rural connectivity challenges to fully leverage precision agriculture technologies.

The SATCOM solution will connect both new and existing machines through satellite internet service and ruggedized satellite terminals. This will enable autonomy, real-time data sharing, remote diagnostics, enhanced self-repair solutions and machine-to-machine communication. All will help farmers work more efficiently while minimizing downtime, according to John Deere.

John Deere, SpaceX Announce Starlink Deal

4. Prescription Inputs
Since 2020, the team at AMVAC has been pioneering at-plant applied variable-rate crop protection. To date, tens of thousands of acres have been planted with SIMPAS-applied Solutions through the SIMPAS application system.

“Our retail agronomist partners expect this market to grow by 50% in the next three to five years,” says Jim Lappin, director of the SIMPAS portfolio at AMVAC. “Growers already think about variable-rate opportunities with macro fertilizer, and the variable-rate seeding rate adoption is high. Right now, variable-rate inputs at plant are in the low double digits for adoption. Overall, the industry is moving away from any flat rates across a field.”

Variable Rate At-Plant Inputs: Industry Update

5. Streamlined Ways To Do Business
Retailers are increasingly doing business digitally with farmer-customers.

For example, AgVend says its customer base bringing digital portals to market with their farmers represents greater than 25% of the U.S. ag input market.

Earlier this year, Growers and Bushel announced a partnership to integrate digital payments into the ag retail purchasing process. Scheduled to be added to the platform this spring, Bushel Wallet will help farmers pay invoices and receive grain settlement checks at more than 2,600 grain buying and ag retail locations in the U.S.

Growers Platform To Integrate Bushel Wallet

6. Gene-Edited Crops
“Gene editing is the analog-to-digital moment for agriculture,” says Rory Riggs, co-founder of Cibus.

Earlier this year, Loveland and Cibus announced a partnership to work toward commercializing herbicide tolerance in rice with a focus on the southern U.S. market, where demand for novel approaches in weed control is most prevalent.

Cibus and Loveland Partner For Gene Edited Rice

7. Fields and Plants That Talk
Technology tools are allowing crop scouting efforts to be expanded with advanced sensors in the field.

For example, Agtrinsic is expanding its network of sensors with Scanit Technologies’ SporeCams and Spornado Samplers. In partnership with Growmark, it’s creating a contiguous disease monitoring network from border to border in Illinois and Iowa and in parts of Missouri, Kentucky, Indiana and Wisconsin. Agtrinsic customers will be able to access this data to help with their crop protection decisions.

Plant varieties are also being developed to help detect problems early. For example, InnerPlant continues to develop its technology to have plants exhibit signals to show early onset of stress, which is detected by remote monitoring. Its ongoing focus has been transgenic soybeans that display a color change within several days of being infected by a disease.

Spornado Data Now Available To Agtrinsic Customers

John Deere Puts Ag Tech Center Stage at CES 24

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 22:33:20 GMT

Walk the hushed aisles of the CES show and it becomes abundantly clear: the world of tech is evolving at breakneck speed. Concepts considered pie-in-the-sky a couple years ago have rocketed up the development curve. Farmers will not be left behind tending dog-eared notepads and dusty bins full of “sneaker drives.”

John Deere has maintained a notable presence at CES since 2019. This year it dubbed its massive CES exhibit “Dirt to Shirt,” presenting a full technology-enabled cotton production cycle. The main highlight was a fully autonomous 8R tractor that attendees controlled themselves with an iPhone. All from 1,300 miles away, over exhibit hall Wi-Fi.

“As I talk to people here at the show, many don’t have a thorough understanding of exactly where their food comes from,” said Joel Dawson, director, production and precision ag marketing for John Deere. “We have an opportunity as a large OEM in the agriculture, construction and forestry spaces to raise that voice and let everyone know the hard and sustainable work our farmers do each day.”

That educational opportunity begins with the driverless 8R tractor live streaming as it completes tillage tasks on John Deere’s test farm near Austin, Texas. The journey then continues through the lens of smart farming technology as it moves through the production cycle.

In the planting area, John Deere highlighted its new seed furrow sensing product, Furrow Vision. The camera-enabled tech “takes the eyes of the farmer and puts them right into the row unit of the planter,” according to Dawson. It opens an entire data set farmers can use to better understand, adjust to and capitalize on what’s happening in the seed furrow.

A half section of a 120’ carbon fiber spray boom showed the ecosystem of cameras, nozzles and Nvidia processing units that enable John Deere’s See & Spray application technology. John Deere says users are seeing up to a two-thirds reduction in herbicide usage versus broadcast spraying.

Next, a quick introduction to a massive cotton harvesting rig with all the artificial intelligence bells and whistles hammers home today’s farmers have plenty of skin in the digital revolution game.

The journey continues with a post-harvest “visit” to meet the family farmers at Bridgeforth Farms – the same folks who created the Deere t-shirts from their own cotton. A display there explained how Deere’s round baling solution as well as the combines’ ability to efficiently separate and save seeds from harvest – they make a good soil amendment or animal feed – contribute to more sustainable cotton production.

“It’s really resonating and it’s exciting, and it gives people a better perspective on how agriculture really works,” Dawson said.

2030 or bust?

While it was not implicitly spelled out at the CES booth, John Deere continues to embrace its goal of demonstrating a fully autonomous corn and soybean production cycle by 2030. Judging from the level of autonomy on display in Vegas, it’s a reasonable assumption John Deere will check that box.

“We’re showing autonomous tillage operating on an 8R tractor – that’s our starting point,” Dawson said. “We’re developing that technology, it’s in our customers’ hands today, and we’re going to continue to expand [upon] it. It’s a big change from where we are today, but we’re driving hard at making sure that happens.”

Sustainability Add-Ons

Operations Center users can now evaluate and opt into sustainability initiatives (some even generate revenue in exchange for data) right in the app via a drop-down tab. Field and machine data flows into whichever initiative the farmer chooses, saving them time on data entry. It also simplifies the task of sorting through all the options.

“It can take farmers literally days and sometimes even weeks to document field boundaries and in-field practices, so the extent to which we can make that process easier is a big win for our customers,” said Oriana Lisker Bosin, product manager, sustainability solutions.

A soon-to-be released Carbon Emissions Calculator was also shown in Las Vegas. Once available, farmers will be able to visualize the carbon emissions from their fields across the entire operation, and then benchmark against their peers to get a more contextual assessment of sustainability practice impacts.

“In five minutes, or even less, the farmer can see the carbon emissions of their fields and put that into context versus a field with fairly low N, tillage and cover crops, as well as against an average conventional field,” said Lisker Bosin.

John Deere was honored with a CES Innovation Award in the Sustainability, Eco-Design & Smart Energy category for its Operations Center Sustainability Tools. The company has captured five straight awards in the category, a trophy for every year at CES.

Watch a quick video clip below with John Deere’s Joel Dawson discussing why the company finds value in exhibiting at CES.

Spoiled Grain? There Are Apps for That

Tue, 05 Mar 2024 20:28:21 GMT

Grain bin monitoring technology adoption is driven primarily by profitability, grain quality, and farmer safety.

“Farmers have monitored their grain bins for many years – they would open the bin, smell it, and check the level by banging a wrench against the side,” says David Postill, senior VP of digital and global marketing, Ag Growth International (AGI). “Today we have much better, safer and accurate methods.”

AGI’s BinManager is one notable grain bin monitoring system, but most operate within a similar framework: in-bin sensors, or cables, record data. Farmers set their target moisture percentages (often 14% to 15% for corn, higher for soybeans) and the technology goes to work in the background. Push notification alerts flag any issues.

“The bin is the farmer’s bank account. Imagine if you had to take your yearly salary and bury it in the backyard, wait a year, and then dig it up and take it to the bank,” Postill says. “You would never do that. You’d safeguard it, monitor it, and maybe even put it into a higher-yielding account.”

Boots-on-the-ground perspective

Ulysses, Nebraska, farmer Lukas Fricke knows firsthand the value of technology. He farms with his brother on ground his father and grandfather worked for decades.

Union Farms, the brothers’ farming operation, holds both corn and soybeans across an array of bin sizes. They truck grain to the local elevator, and they truck beans to crush into soybean oil to feed their hogs. The duo stuck a toe in the water a couple years ago, adding AGI monitoring tech to one of the soybean bins.

“The return-on-investment was fast – it paid for itself that first year,” says Fricke, adding the automation unlocked 300-400 extra bushels of soybean moisture.

The brothers were sold.

“We just did the other three bins this year – now every piece of grain on our farm is being managed and watched and guarded,” he says.

Fricke cautions farmers might suffer sticker shock at the up-front costs – the brothers went for the top tier AGI monitoring suite, after all – but it proved a wise investment.

“During harvest we’ve got pig loads going out and coming in, feed coming in, fields to harvest, manure to put away, if you don’t have your head screwed on it can get out of hand very quickly,” Fricke says.

Breaking down the basics

The basic conditions being monitored are temperature and moisture levels (relative humidity). Integrated on-farm weather stations, as well as Co2 monitoring sensors, represent a higher level of management. The goal, according to HTS Ag President Adam Gittins, is perfectly conditioned grain with zero farmer entry.

“I like to joke there are two types of farmers out there: those that have had some grain spoil, and those that lie about it,” Gittins says.

While mold, generally the product of low temperature and high moisture, is the main nemesis, the systems prevent over drying, too. Water is weight, and weight is money at the elevator.

“The sky is the limit when it comes to what it can do,” says Gittins, noting data aggregation with planter and combine data for full traceability from field to elevator remain the next big breakthroughs.

HTS Ag installs and services OPI Grain Management Systems, which Gittins says has 40 years of grain monitoring experience. He says the OPI Blue system gives farmers remote access to real time moisture, temperature, and CO2, as well as automation, set to the grower’s parameters and using bin specific weather conditions. “This fall, we had a run of cool moist air run at my bin site, and I was able to rehydrate my beans a few points with OPI’s fan automation,” says Gittins.

“With most tech being cloud based, you can have true up and downstream data integration and track grain through the last mile,” he adds. “It’s an exciting time to be a part of this technology.”

Boosting quality of life

Matt Koch, chief marketing officer, Sukup, echoes that sentiment. Koch spent his early days as a developer and engineer in automation systems. Today he’s putting that background to work helping farmers understand how Sukup’s monitoring technology can improve quality of life.

Sukup recently closed on a Des Moines, Iowa, based custom automation company, Ramco Innovations, to build out its yet-to-be-released bin monitoring ecosystem. Details are scant, but what Koch can confirm is the finished product will hit the market in 2025. And it will make users’ lives easier.

“If we can sell back quality of life to our customers, that is really where we’re going to win,” Koch says. “Bins are a commoditized product – but if I told you we can automate the process today that you’re doing manually, and you can have full visibility into the process and not have to be there in person, that’s how we can sell back quality of life.”

CropX, Reinke Team Up on Actual ET Sensors

Thu, 08 Feb 2024 20:03:37 GMT

CropX Technologies announced the launch of Reinke Direct ET™ by CropX, a sensor-based innovation that provides Actual Evapotranspiration (ETa) measurements on a Reinke center pivot irrigation system.

The product is available exclusively through Reinke.

By measuring the amount of water that crops use, Reinke Direct ET gives farmers daily insights into their crop’s water needs, enabling informed irrigation decisions.

CropX is also releasing its Actual ET sensor, a device that can be installed in any field to measure ETa. In combination with a CropX soil sensor as part of the CropX agronomic farm management system, users will have access to accurate water-plant usage and soil water availability metrics.

“Precision agriculture is crucial for modern farming. This collaboration with Reinke Irrigation allows us to deliver solutions that help farmers optimize their water usage. Our new Actual ET devices can ensure pivot and non-pivot growers can access the same level of detail,” said Tomer Tzach, CEO of CropX.

The underlying ET measurement technology was developed by Tule Technologies, which was acquired by CropX in January 2023.

Click here to learn more.

Precision Planting Rolls Out New Planter, Software

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 15:40:27 GMT

Precision Planting today revealed a fully custom, factory-built planting system called CornerStone. The CornerStone Planting System comes fully built with everything but the planter bar and is integrated with Precision Planting’s technology.

The company also announced that Panorama from Precision Planting now has two Application Programming Interface (API) connections and is available for purchase. Additionally, a larger 20|20 monitor was announced, as well as updates on the Radicle Agronomics platform.

CornerStone Planting System

Precision Planting’s new planter solution enhances ease of in-field use, and offers simple adjustments for changing planting conditions. The system also offers increased durability and serviceability, according to the company.

Compatible with all standard-height 7x7 planter bars, CornerStone is fully integrated with Precision Planting technologies and will allow farmers to customize their planter with a factory-built system that ships with all components — both mechanical and electronic — already installed.

“We’re currently beta testing the CornerStone Planting System and, with successful field trials this spring, anticipate it being commercially available to dealers and farmers in 2025,” said Caleb Schleder, director of technical services and support.

Panorama Commercially Available

Precision Planting’s Panorama allows farmers to view maps and input summaries and agronomic data from a Gen 3 20|20. Now commercially available, farmers can see all of their 20|20 data on their phone, computer or other platform of their choice.

The company has also announced its first API connections to Panorama: John Deere Operations Center and Climate FieldView. Users of Precision Planting’s 20|20 who want to further explore and analyze data in either of these two connections can do so by linking the two together.

16-inch 20|20 Display

Precision Planting’s 20|20 display is now available at 16-inches and offers two times the widget locations and is perfect for visualizing more data in the cab, according to the company.

“Farmers want to visualize more data in the field than ever before,” said Justin Vollmer, software engineer. “With the new 16-inch 20|20 display and our latest software release, a grower can mount secondary 20|20 displays wherever it makes the most sense in the cab.

Along with the new display, a new 5 port ethernet switch is being beta tested to allow multiple in-cab screen combinations.

Radicle Agronomics

Radicle agronomics is a suite of soil sampling and analysis tools that the company hopes will improve the efficiency and repeatability of the soil sample to fertilizer recommendation process.

“Radicle Agronomics can help growers optimize fertilizer management by integrating and improving the decision process,” said Dale Koch, Radicle product manager.

Starting with GeoPress and GeoTube in the field, soil samplers can take samples and mix and package them into an RFID coded GeoTube that references the location of the sample. The tubes are then taken to the Radicle Lab, the world’s first self-contained soil lab. MicroFlow technology used in the Radicle lab helps eliminate human errors from the traditional laboratory process, completing a precision soil analysis in minutes, Koch added.

The final step in the Radicle system is Precision Planting software that allows users to set up field boundaries, track the GeoPress’ location, and view sample results from the lab.

“Agronomists and growers will be able to determine soil pH, buffer pH, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, calcium, cation exchange capacity and base saturation,” Koch said.

The Radicle system is planned for a staged rollout, with a limited number of GeoPress systems in the field in 2024 and a beta with the Radicle Lab. Agronomists with an interest in using GeoPress can contact Precision Planting for more information.

The Scoop Podcast: Beyond Typical Ag Retail and Co-op Services

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 14:11:17 GMT

As an irrigation water management specialist at Centra Sota Cooperative based in Minnesota, Rebecca Schubert does farmer outreach, education and program partnerships while running the cooperative’s water management program.

As a technical service provider, Schubert assists farmers with opportunities via USDA-NRCS. She says this expansion is beyond what has been assumed a co-op can provide while also helping farmers pull together all aspects of their approach to conservation.

“Farmers get an opportunity to get financial assistance through the government to further their conservation efforts, and we get to be on the frontline of that,” Schubert says. “We get to come help them complete the program and help them along the way. It’s been a great way to connect the cooperative with the public sector.”

The expansion of services into environmental and water management includes moisture sensors installations, water irrigation uniformity testing, and services Schubert says are “beyond the typical retail ag co-op.”

“When we think of retail ag co-op we think fertilizer, fuel, feed. This is really a service that takes that one step further, and it incorporates all that and more into their conservation practices,” Schubert says.

As an example of the type of water management program she’s assisted with, Schubert gives an example of a farmer who installed their first center pivot two years ago.

“He really took to me and relied on me to help educate him along the way as far as water management, when to water and how much to water. He’s really been grateful along the way, and we’ve really developed an amazing client-consultant relationship,” she says.

Within the co-op, the water management team works with other divisions.

“Any of our recommendations that go along with our environmental service programs, like farm planning or nutrient management planning through NRCS, are when our crop advisors can come to us as a resource,” Schubert says.

Schubert started at the co-op as an intern, and today she helps mentor the intern program, a full circle experience she says is very rewarding.

Hear more in The Scoop Podcast.

3 New Technologies to Increase Insights and Reduce Costs

Mon, 28 Aug 2023 15:14:55 GMT

Ag cooperative Ceres Solutions recently held a technology field day at their Crops 63 location. Here are three technologies they’re testing that can help farmers increase their field insights while saving money on input and operating costs.

See & Spray

John Deere’s See & Spray Ultimate could save growers 60% on post-emergence herbicides. The technology uses 36 cameras to target and spray weeds, instead of the entire field.

“If there are 100 acres, we may only be spraying 40 acres worth of chemicals because that’s where the technology is seeing weeds,” says Doug Galloway of AHW, an Indiana and Illinois John Deere dealership.

See & Spray Ultimate came into full production in 2023 and is being updated as improvements are made. It is currently used in corn, soybean and cotton fields and available both directly to growers and through retailers.

The technology is registered to spray pre-canopy in up to 30-inch corn and soybeans, and the cameras on the machine are proven to spot weeds ranging from ¼ inch to full size at 12.5 mph.

While See & Spray Ultimate will only come on a new sprayer, See & Spray Premium can be added to certain existing sprayers through a precision improvement plan.

To learn more, visit John Deere’s website or check out one of The Scoop’s previous stories on See & Spray:

What Can Ag Retailers Charge For Latest Spraying Technology?

Texas Grower Puts John Deere’s See and Spray Technology to the Test

On Target: John Deere’s Latest Green-On-Green Spraying Innovation

Soiltech

Soiltech is offering a mobile, easy-to-install and cost-effective way to monitor your crops.

Their device, called a “beacon”, is a handheld sensor that is planted, harvested, transported and stored with your crops. It collects data such as temperature, humidity, moisture, and other factors that could impact crop quality. An app and web dashboard allow growers and retailers to view and analyze the data.

The device is 6.5 in. tall by 4.75 in. wide and its battery has a 12–16-month lifespan before needing to be recharged. Soiltech is exploring solar-powered and plug-in options to further avoid disturbing the soil.

The company began selling these devices in 2020 and currently has over 3,000 in use. The devices work in any crop – including potatoes, corn, soybeans, fruits, tree crops, etc.

In addition to convenience, the device is also considerably less expensive than other sensors on the market: $500. An optional antenna is $60 and the subscription to the app and web dashboard is $99 annually.

This product is available both directly to growers and through retailers. To learn more, visit Soiltech’s website .

EarthOptics

EarthOptics is a new way to sample soil that reduces cost and increases accuracy.

“Folks are paying for the soil sampling they can afford as opposed to soil sampling they may want or need to make the best agronomic decisions year after year,” Brittany Buchanan of EarthOptics says. “This technology advancement can move the industry in a direction of more regular soil sampling and more accurate, more precise soil sampling.”

The company’s soil sensor is called GroundOwl, which mounts to an ATV, tractor or side-by-side to measure soil compaction, changes in soil texture, carbon content, conductivity and nutrient properties.

GroundOwl collects over 16 data points every second, making the data more specific than traditional sampling. This allows users to make targeted decisions to small regions for seed, fertilizer or lime placements.

EarthOptics measures and maps the soil and looks to farm advisors to leverage the data and make recommendations. For more information, visit their website .

Innoquest’s New Digital Soil Moisture Meter

Wed, 09 Aug 2023 15:00:11 GMT

Designed for quick and accurate soil readings, the SpotOn Soil Moisture Meter from Innoquest reports soil moisture, EC, and temperature.

“Parameters measured by this meter are essential for proper irrigation management which requires control of soil water content while avoiding buildup of salts within the root zone” said Bill Hughes, President of Innoquest.

The SpotOn Soil Moisture Meter includes two probe rods: 2.4” and 1.5”.

Innoquest built the SpotOn to operate at a higher frequency (100 MHz), which can result in more accurate readings in soils with high salinity or high clay content. Its design focused on user-friendly operation and easy maintenance. Calibration is not required as long as rods are maintained and not bent.

Its list price is $995.

InnerPlant–Tech That Visualizes Plant Stress–Names Germplasm Partner

Thu, 18 May 2023 13:00:00 GMT

For four years, the team at InnerPlant has been working developing transgenic soybeans that display a color change within several days of being infected by a disease. Today, the company has announced a partnership with Mertec, an Iowa-based breeder and developer of soybean germplasm for the seed trade.

The companies say this collaboration paves the way for plants to emit signals showing attack by pathogens, pests or a lack of water or nutrients.

In is the on the heels of InnerPlant partnering with Satellogic to develop an instrument detecting those signals from space via a satellite.

“Better data directly from plants gives farmers the tools they need to increase yields while reducing chemical inputs,” said Shely Aronov, CEO and founder of InnerPlant. “Combining our new category of seed technology with Mertec’s elite germplasm is a key step toward putting that data into farmers’ hands.”

The InnerPlant technology can signal plant stress within days of infection. The signals can be detected via satellite or on ground-based equipment, such as tractors. The goal is to provide the visual detecting weeks before the farmer would otherwise be able to.

“Farmers and agronomists understand that plants possess inherent knowledge of their needs,” said Joe Merschman, president of Mertec LLC. “This emerging field of seed technology holds the potential to enhance our understanding of these requirements, leading to improved efficiency and higher yields.”

No timeline for availability was included in the news release.

Smart Spraying: AGCO and Bosch BASF Smart Farming Forge Path to Commercialization in 2024

Thu, 06 Apr 2023 20:13:55 GMT

Starting in 2024, AGCO will offer the Bosch BASF Smart Farming Smart Spraying technology on Fendt Rogator sprayers. These sprayers will be initially launched and available in Europe and North America.

The first trials of the Bosch BASF Smart Farming’s technology on AGCO equipment started in 2021. Its Smart Spraying Solution aims to deliver optimal herbicide application—effective to control weeds with targeted spraying while also providing product savings. The system is engineered to work in the daytime or at night.

“What makes our system unique is the combination of superior precision, digital tools and the agronomic expertise. With a 24/7 application capability, we create exceptional green-on-green and green-on-brown performance. This type of precision agronomics offering is a breakthrough to support farmers with less impact and higher yields,” said Matt Leininger, Managing Director North America, Bosch BASF Smart Farming.

The Smart Farming Solution is layered with digital tools including Bosch BASF’s pest identification technology. The companies highlight how the system offers “an end-to-end user experience through AGCO on-board and off-board controls and Bosch BASF Smart Farming’s integrated digital platform from xarvio Digital Farming Solutions, with insights into the data gathered during the application”

“The progress we have made with Bosch BASF Smart Farming in developing a sustainable solution that maintains productivity while improving profitability and delivering clean fields with maximum savings is an excellent example of AGCO’s farmer focus,” said Seth Crawford, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Precision Ag & Digital, AGCO. “We look forward to our further collaboration with Bosch BASF Smart Farming as we work together to bring this solution to farmers and custom applicators around the world.”
At launch supported crops include: corn, soy, cotton, canola, sunflower, and sugarbeet.

Sensors

AgZen, Corteva Team up on AI-Powered, Retrofit Sprayer Tech

Farmer Feedback

Survey Says: Smart Farming Has Big Impact On U.S. Farms, And There’s Room for More

The next big thing?

Farm Drone News: AgEagle Multispectral Sensor, GPS Satellite Launched and Rantizo Spins Off Software

AgEagle Aerial Systems Unveils New RedEdge-P Green Camera

Dutch Startup Launches Largest GPS Network for Drones, Tractors

Missouri Doctoral Student Says Drones Are Fine Tool for Crop Scouting

Rantizo Spin-Off American Autonomy Inc. Says It Can Close the Spray Drone Data Loop

Meet The Forge: Kelly Hills Unmanned Puts New Spin on Ag Tech Field Testing

John Deere-Sentera Tie Up: Here’s What We Know So Far

John Deere Challenge: Watch a New York Tech Journalist Farm 20 Acres of Corn for $20 Profit

Yamaha Ag Q&A: When Can Growers Buy Farm Robots? North America Rollout Explained

John Deere Details Model Year 2026 Updates, New Machine Capabilities and Technology Features

Dalton Dilldine: Next-Generation Producer Follows in His Father's Footsteps

John Deere Introducing Next Generation Perception Autonomy Kits

A Farmer Can Dream, Right? Tesla Robots As the Farm Labor Force of the Future?

Mineral: Applying Silicon Valley ‘Superpowers’ To Agriculture

What’s the first thing to come from Mineral to the farm?

The data Mineral is collecting is another of its core competencies.

A visual example of the work Mineral is doing is the rover platform.

Another partner in the specialty crop business has yielded multiple projects moving forward.

One focus for the team at Mineral is to make its technology easier to use in the field.

What about other well-known Google technologies?

So what’s Mineral’s vision for the future of agriculture?

EarthOptics, Pattern Ag Combine Forces On Next-Level Soil Data Analytics

Inside InnerPlant’s Farmer-Led Investment Run and Why It’s Better Than Traditional VC

Landus’ Secret Weapon: Military Grade AI Tech Connects Farm Data Dots

Google’s Parent Company Alphabet Disperses Its Ag Tech Subsidiary

Smart Firmer: What Is It, What Can I Do With The Data?

How To Use Smart Firmer Data

Three’s A Crowd: Hylio Secures FAA Drone Swarm, Night Flight Exemptions

Why it Matters

Advice for farmers

What Could the Future Hold?

More Smart Farming content for you:

Autonomy In Ag Is Firing On All Cylinders Right Now, And It Looks Different Depending On Where You Live

Seed Technology and Evolving Farming Practices Win Against Drought’s Grip

You Can’t Afford to Be Complacent About Tar Spot

7 Technology Trends Ag Retailers Need To Know

John Deere Puts Ag Tech Center Stage at CES 24

2030 or bust?

Sustainability Add-Ons

Watch a quick video clip below with John Deere’s Joel Dawson discussing why the company finds value in exhibiting at CES.

Spoiled Grain? There Are Apps for That

Boots-on-the-ground perspective

Breaking down the basics

Boosting quality of life

CropX, Reinke Team Up on Actual ET Sensors

Precision Planting Rolls Out New Planter, Software

CornerStone Planting System

Panorama Commercially Available

16-inch 20|20 Display

Radicle Agronomics

The Scoop Podcast: Beyond Typical Ag Retail and Co-op Services

Hear more in The Scoop Podcast.

3 New Technologies to Increase Insights and Reduce Costs

Innoquest’s New Digital Soil Moisture Meter

InnerPlant–Tech That Visualizes Plant Stress–Names Germplasm Partner

Read More: A Mood Ring For Plants? InnerPlant Raises $16 Million, Led by John Deere

Smart Spraying: AGCO and Bosch BASF Smart Farming Forge Path to Commercialization in 2024