by Katy Hill, RDO Equipment Co.’s Application Technology Product Manager as her blog appeared in Precision Farming Dealer magazine
Farmers know spraying applications can vary from year to year and even from field to field depending on weed pressure and a variety of other crops and environmental factors. To address these ever-changing conditions, John Deere and RDO Equipment Co. team members partner with farmers to bring the See & Spray technology into fields.
Equipped with cameras, AI-machine learning and machine control, John Deere’s See & Spray precisely identifies, targets and sprays weeds. First introduced in 2018 by John Deere and Blue River technology, See & Spray uses cameras, processors and a boom to apply non-residual herbicides to weeds with pinpoint accuracy within corn, soybean and cotton fields.
“The system uses artificial intelligence in combination with the cameras mounted along the boom,” said Mark Schaffner, RDO Equipment Co. regional sales manager based in South Dakota. “The vision processing units provide real-time data, and the system determines whether each element is a weed or a crop. If it spots a crop, it activates a nozzle and sprays the weed. All of this occurs within milliseconds.”
Farmers in the Midwest and Northwest partner with team members like Schaffner, Gannon Pudwill, an RDO precision upgrade product specialist, and experienced technicians to obtain in-the-field experience with See & Spray. From year to year, more farmers opt to purchase a See & Spray or upgrade their current sprayer with a See & Spray precision upgrade kit (PUK). During just one year, RDO increased from seven customers trying See & Spray to about 60 doing See & Spray field trials the following season. Through these field partnerships, farmers discover ways that the See & Spray technology optimizes their operations and reduces overall spraying applications.
See & Spray? What Farmers Report
“During field trials, farmers using See & Spray saw a 60% to 70% savings,” Schaffner shared after a trial with Steven Swanhorst, a farmer based in northeastern South Dakota.
Swanhorst shares that though the technology sounds intimidating, it is not.
“It’s quite simple and user-friendly. The dealer support has been on the ‘A Team’ level. The degree of technology is not only on the leading edge, but on the bleeding edge,” Swanhorst said. “I wouldn’t own a sprayer without it.”
Jared Billadeau, a North Dakota grain farmer, agrees with Swanhorst: it doesn’t take long to learn how See & Spray works.
“When we went down to the dealer-customer product launch, I remember coming back thinking, ‘Boy, that’s going to be a tough sell in western North Dakota with no-till and everything we do’,” Billadeau said. “A year later, that skepticism died pretty quickly after I saw it in action.”
Billadeau chose the See & Spray Ultimate kit, which features dual application tanks, as opposed to the Premium kit’s single tank. The following technology was tested in all John Deere See & Spray field trials.
*See & Spray Ultimate or Premium
*Carbon-fiber boom equipped with 36 cameras
*ExactApply Nozzle Control System
*BoomTrac Pro 2
*StarFire 7500 Receiver
*G5 Plus Display
Reduce Herbicides, Increase Savings
Billadeau tested his sprayer to the highest level of sensitivity.
“I might’ve been a little more skeptical on this, so I headed to the most aggressive settings you could, spraying the most it could,” he said. “We were at about a 50-50 savings.”
As Biladeau became more familiar with the machine, he adjusted the settings and decreased the number of acres sprayed, saving about 60% of the spraying application.
“The default settings alone are going to save you a lot and there’s not going to be any skips out there, because the cameras on the sprayer are precise,” he said.
Billadeau shares that emptying See & Spray’s tank takes a long time, reducing the dependence on another operator running a water trailer for refills. Billadeau was able to save time and minimize application volume. See & Spray reduces stress on crops The ability to test different nozzles and sprayer calibrations for even coverage also helped Billadeau to reduce overall stress on crops.
“I discovered that different sprayer tips may change your application,” he said. “Talk to your dealer about the different options and test it out.”
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