John Deere, the global agricultural equipment manufacturer, recognized that farmers faced increasing pressure to reduce chemical inputs while maintaining crop yields. Traditional farming applied herbicides uniformly across fields, treating both weeds and crops indiscriminately and wasting chemicals while harming the environment. Farmers needed precision tools that could identify weeds and apply chemicals only where necessary, but this level of precision exceeded human capabilities at farming scale and speed.
John Deere developed See & Spray technology using computer vision and machine learning to identify individual plants in real-time as equipment passed through fields at normal operating speeds. The AI distinguished weeds from crops with high accuracy, triggering precision spray nozzles that applied herbicide only to weeds rather than broadcasting across the entire field. This system integrated with John Deere's connected farm platform, providing farmers with data on weed pressure, chemical usage, and field variability.
“AI is transforming farming from an art to a science. Our See & Spray technology lets farmers be precise in ways that were impossible before.”— John May, CEO, John Deere
This case study is based on publicly available information about John Deere.
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