United StatesManufacturing2022 – ongoingJohn Deere
See & Spray targeted herbicide spraying
Camera-guided sprayers cut herbicide use by 59% on average in 2024, Deere says, and nearly 50% in 2025
Problem
Conventional sprayers apply herbicide across the whole field, including the crop rows where no weeds grow. Farmers pay for chemicals that are not needed, and the excess adds to environmental pressure.
Approach
Deere bought Blue River Technology, a Silicon Valley start-up that built camera-based "see-and-spray" robots, for $305 million in 2017. Blue River developed the technology behind See & Spray Ultimate, which Deere introduced in March 2022 as a factory-installed option on its large sprayers; boom-mounted cameras and onboard processors tell crop from weed and switch individual nozzles on only over weeds. In 2025 Deere began charging a per-acre fee tied to the area the system leaves unsprayed, with no charge when it saves nothing.
Results
Takeaway
Deere built AI into a product that cut customer input costs and tied its price to savings in 2025. Its estimated average savings fell from 59% in 2024 to nearly 50% in 2025 as acreage grew from about 1 million to more than 5 million in what it called a heavy-weed season.
Categories
- Size
- Large enterprise
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Business function
- IT and R&D
- Innovation type
- Product and service innovationBusiness model innovation
- AI technology
- Computer vision
- Adoption
- Built in-house
- Evidence
- Company's own claim
Sources
Source summaries
Deere estimates that See & Spray saved about 8 million gallons of herbicide mix on more than 1 million acres in the 2024 season, with an average saving of 59% on corn, soybean and cotton fields. Deere measured the saving against broadcast spraying for the Premium and Ultimate versions and assumed 15 gallons per acre to calculate the volume saved. It also cites an Iowa State University extension study reporting 76% average product savings.
Deere reports that customers used See & Spray on more than five million acres in 2025 and cut non-residual herbicide use by nearly 50% on average, saving close to 31 million gallons of mix in a wet season with heavy weed pressure. In 2025 Deere introduced the Application Savings Guarantee, a per-acre fee of $1 on fallow and $5 in-crop that is charged only for acres the system leaves unsprayed.
Reports the launch of See & Spray Ultimate as a factory-installed system for model year 2023 Deere sprayers, for in-crop targeted spraying in corn, soybeans and cotton. It explains that the targeted spray technology came from Blue River Technology, which Deere acquired in 2017, and describes the cameras and onboard processors that detect weeds. A Deere manager is quoted claiming the system can cut non-residual herbicide use by more than two-thirds.
Reports that Deere agreed to buy Blue River Technology, a Silicon Valley robotics start-up, for $305 million, with the deal expected to close that September. Blue River's tractor-mounted "see-and-spray" robots used computer vision to find plants that need herbicide or fertilizer. The start-up had raised about $31 million in venture funding.
Full details are in the original sources.
