John Deere See & Spray — computer-vision-driven precision spraying in US row crops

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John Deere’s See & Spray technology uses boom-mounted cameras and onboard processors to scan over 2,500 square feet per second at up to 15 mph, identifying weeds and triggering individual spray nozzles via Deere’s ExactApply system. Herbicide is applied only where needed.

Vendor-reported figures (John Deere / Precision Farming Dealer, November 2025):

• Used across more than 5 million acres during the 2025 growing season (larger than the state of New Jersey).
• Average ~50% reduction in non-residual herbicide use.
• ~31 million gallons of herbicide mix saved.
• 2 bushel/acre average yield bump in seven-state trials (Mississippi, Nebraska, Arkansas, Indiana, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee), John Deere-commissioned research.
• Upper range: 4.8 bu/acre yield bump in some trials.

Commercial design. In 2025 John Deere introduced the Application Savings Guarantee — farmers and custom applicators pay for See & Spray via a per-acre fee only when the technology delivers measurable savings. Cost model: $1/fallow acre or $5/in-crop acre. New for 2026: Unlimited Annual License for high-use operations. The guarantee is structurally notable — vendor cost is aligned with measured customer benefit.

Deployment model. Equipment-integrated (factory installation or Precision Upgrade kit on MY18 and newer R-series and 400/600 series sprayers, plus Hagie sprayers). Locked to Deere equipment — does not work on competitor sprayers. See G-017.

What this unit is doing in the taxonomy

Anchors the computer vision × input reduction × on-farm open field cell with the most concretely quantified deployed example. The 5 million acres figure is the kind of headline number talks lean on; the unit carries the source attribution and the verification discipline.

Why it matters for talks

• The most concrete deployed computer-vision-driven input-reduction example in row crops at meaningful scale.
• The Application Savings Guarantee is rare in agricultural AI — vendor cost aligned with measured benefit. Worth understanding why Deere adopted it.
• Locked to Deere equipment — gives a concrete anchor for the right-to-repair and vendor lock-in critical conversations.
• Compare with Bayer Climate FieldView (data layer, vendor-neutral interface) and AGCO PTx (brand-agnostic retrofit) to surface the three competing market structures.

Critical context

• The 50% herbicide reduction figure is from John Deere-commissioned research. The seven-state trials are described as third-party researchers and universities but the commissioning relationship matters. Independent verification at multi-vendor / multi-region scale not surfaced (G-020).
• The yield bump figure (2 bu/acre average) is real but context-dependent — depends on weed pressure, herbicide resistance profile, baseline management.
• See & Spray works only on Deere sprayers. This is structurally a lock-in strategy. Useful to name in the same breath as the FTC-Deere settlement — the technology and the right-to-repair conversation are not separable.
• The Application Savings Guarantee is a smart commercial response to farmer hesitation about AI adoption cost. Whether it actually delivers as advertised in bad years is a question worth tracking.