Ag machinery giant John Deere is preparing to launch the next generation of its digital farming tools, adding a scouting feature built from its See & Spray precision agriculture technology.
See & Scout will use the sprayer cameras that are part of the See & Spray offering to gather field data and produce insights like weed pressure maps, even when the machine is not being used for precision spraying, Joshua Ladd, go-to-market manager for application at John Deere, told AgTechNavigator.
Additionally, See & Scout will add stand count maps — a map depicting emerged plants — starting with corn, while applied maps and canopy maps will still be exclusively generated through See & Spray, Ladd said.
“We’ve got aspirations much bigger and broader than just corn, but we’ll set the base with corn, and then we’ll build that out from there,” he added.
John Deere will offer See & Scout for all Gen 1 See & Spray systems with premium and ultimate plans, and MY27 sprayers, Ladd noted.
“When we think about See & Scout, it lives within the See & Spray and umbrella, but it’s really more geared around the data and the insights that we are able to document, using those 36 cameras along the boom and the center frame and the center of chassis of the machine, and delivering those insights through data layers back to a customer’s Operation Center at no additional cost,” he elaborated.
John Deere’s full digital farming story
The original equipment manufacturer has also made several updates to See & Spray since the beginning of the year, while John Deere prepares to start MY27 selling, with Gen 2 sprayers starting to hit farms later this year with most arriving next year, Ladd noted.
At Commodity Classic this year, John Deere shared that See & Spray will expand from corn, soybean, and cotton into barley, canola, edible beans, peanuts, milo, sugar beets, and wheat for MY 2027 Gen 2 sprayers. Gen 1 See & Spray systems will also be updated to include these crops, except edible beans, when the features are officially rolled out, Ladd explained.
Additionally, John Deere made changes to how it bills fallow acres — land that has been left unseeded — for See & Spray, which would historically cost $1 per acre. After April 1, farmers with See & Spray can pass “as many fallow acres with that machine, and there’s no additional cost from John Deere,” Ladd explained.
These updates are part of John Deere’s broader digital farming strategy, which includes capabilities from its acquisition of aerial imaging company Sentera last year. John Deere is working with its dealer network to educate them and farmers about the full range of its digital and precision capabilities, Ladd said.
“There have been a lot of conversations about where we take this. I think Sentera is going to be able to contribute significantly to the future as well. And so, I would say that we still have work to do on how we communicate to our dealer channel and to our customers out there [about] the full portfolio story,” he elaborated.
