The best AI agritech platform for row crop farms with high herbicide costs

On five Iowa soybean fields in 2024, Iowa State University Extension reported that a John Deere See & Spray Ultimate sprayer cut post-emergence herbicide by an average of 76%. We name John Deere See & Spray the best AI agritech platform for a row crop farm with high herbicide costs and a qualifying sprayer, because its cameras decide weed by weed which nozzles open while the sprayer is moving.

Climate FieldView is the better pick for a farm that plans its treatments before the pass, from crop protection plans built on field data and satellite field-health imagery, and runs machinery from more than one maker through an in-cab device compatible with most equipment brands. Taranis suits an advisor or grower who wants leaf-level drone scouting flown by a service and a herbicide prescription to edit by weed species and zone. Both hand over a plan before the sprayer enters the field, and See & Spray acts at the boom during the pass.

What should a row crop farm with high herbicide costs weigh?

Iowa State's precision spraying report describes boom cameras that detect weeds in real time and spray them immediately, and its separate drone-mapping demonstration describes a prescription written from a drone flight before the sprayer goes out. A scouting alert or a prescription reaches the field through a later application, and a nozzle command changes the product applied during the pass. For each product, establish which output it hands you and how that output changes the amount of herbicide applied on your fields.

A University of Arkansas-led economic analysis of See & Spray treats equipment, herbicide, field efficiency and a subscription fee as separate cost inputs. Iowa State's dollar figure covers chemical cost alone, so a herbicide saving is one line of that sum. Put the hardware price and the yearly technology charge beside it, worked out on your own treated acres.

The drone-mapping report notes that a grid of images can be too coarse to identify the smallest weeds, and Montana State University Extension tells buyers to evaluate a spot-spraying system under their own crop and field conditions. Image scale has to match the decision being made. A satellite layer directs a scout to a patch, and treating a single weed takes an image that resolves it.

Iowa State lists boom-height control, individual nozzle control, compatible nozzles and boom recirculation as operating requirements for precision sprayers. The sprayer has to deliver what the software decides, so settle the eligibility of your exact machine before you discuss price.

Montana State's purchasing list includes compatibility with existing equipment and the ability to export as-applied maps, and Corn Belt farmers interviewed for a study in Precision Agriculture reported trouble syncing data between platforms. A prescription has no effect until it loads in the cab, so ask each vendor to show the file or connection that carries its output to your display.

John Deere, FieldView and Taranis on the spray decision

John Deere: the spray decision happens at the nozzle

See & Spray uses camera vision and machine learning to tell an in-season crop from a weed and spray only the weed, the Gen 2 product page says. Iowa State's report on this class of sprayer describes weeds detected in real time and sprayed immediately. On Gen 2, Deere says the system also detects biomass and applies different rates that the operator sets.

Across about 415 acres in Boone and Story counties, the report puts the reduction between 43.9% and 90.6% by field and values the average at about $15.7 per acre in chemical cost. The fields had received similar pre-emergence residual programs, and the measured pass was the post-emergence one. Iowa State says savings were directly influenced by the weed pressure each field started with, and the field with the smallest reduction had poor residual control after heavy spring rain.

Iowa State ran an Ultimate machine in soybeans, and its report states that specific herbicide reduction levels are not guaranteed. Use it as a measurement of that machine in that season, then price your own fields with the sprayer hardware and the software license added, since the dollar figure leaves both out.

Gen 2 is standard on model year 2027 and newer 400R and 600R Series sprayers, according to the same Deere page. The Premium upgrade page offers See & Spray Premium as a retrofit for qualifying model year 2018 to 2026 R-Series, 400 Series and 600 Series sprayers, and it limits the system to specific qualifying nozzles. Have the dealer write eligibility for your exact machine and boom into the equipment quote, with the nozzles named.

In-crop passes with See & Spray require a renewable software license, and targeted fallow passes carry no additional cost, both Deere pages say. Ask for the hardware price and the current license charge on one quote, because the herbicide saved on your acres has to pay for both. Deere says the sprayer records and streams its data to the farm's John Deere Operations Center account.

Climate FieldView: treatment plans built from the farm record

The Build Prescriptions page lists Crop Protection Plans, which use field data to create targeted herbicide applications, alongside prescriptions for seeding rates and fertility. The plan is made before the pass. The page says a finished script converts into one of many file types to upload or send wirelessly.

The Plus plan starts at $649 a year, billed annually, and its feature table includes Field Health Imagery, which uses satellite imagery to identify areas of a field that need attention. Yield analysis and API connectivity are on the same plan. The prescription group in that table names FieldView Seed Scripts, Enhanced Scripting, Manual Scripting and Grain Futures, so ask FieldView which plan carries the crop protection plan you intend to build.

The scouting page describes imagery for monitoring vegetation and biomass on every acre. A scout adds a pin with a photo and notes, and the pins are shareable.

In-cab data collection runs through the FieldView Drive 2.0, a $499 device that plugs into a machine's CAN diagnostic port and sends data by Bluetooth to an iPad running the FieldView Cab app. FieldView describes it as compatible with most equipment brands, so check your sprayer and its display by model before you order. The Drive serves that in-cab route, and the data page also describes uploading records from flash drives or other systems and transferring historical data from other agronomic software.

FieldView's partner page for John Deere Operations Center describes a two-way connection that shares field boundaries, prescriptions, seeding, application and harvest data. Scripts generated in FieldView reach equipment through Operations Center on that route.

Taranis: flown scouting and a prescription the advisor edits

Taranis trains and deploys drone professionals who fly fields with enterprise drones and its own flight app, and it describes the imagery as submillimeter and centimeter-level, captured simultaneously. Planet and Sentinel satellite imagery supplements the drone images. The company homepage describes leaf-level insights built for advisors to deliver to growers.

The service-level terms commit to processing and analytics within 72 hours of a successful image acquisition, at a minimum sampling ratio of one image per two acres. That clock starts after a successful flight, and the service description lists weather and wind among the conditions that limit acquisition. Early-season weed output is a quantified broadleaf and grass population, with species named when the mission's image constraints allow.

In a Taranis help article on herbicide prescriptions, the user selects detected weeds by species, generates zones from weed pressure, edits the zones, enters herbicide products with a rate for each zone, and downloads a shapefile for in-cab use. Before the season, confirm that your display reads that file and that your sprayer applies by zone.

A case in the North Central Weed Science Society draft proceedings, run with Ag Partners Cooperative and Taranis on a single soybean field near Hiawatha, Kansas, compared Taranis weed tags with manual weed counts. The authors report a moderate correlation. The imagery identified the areas with no weeds and did not clearly separate medium from high weed densities.

Subscriptions are annual and priced per subscribed acre, and plans and acres are non-refundable, the service description says. The service-plan page lists Advanced+, Elite+ and Pro+ with four, five and six missions and sends buyers to Taranis to select one. The signed Order Form sets when subscribed acres expire.

Which AI agritech platform should a row crop farm with high herbicide costs choose?

John Deere See & Spray is our pick for a row crop farm with high herbicide costs and a sprayer that qualifies for it. It decides at the nozzle during the pass, and Iowa State measured what that decision saved in herbicide on working fields. FieldView and Taranis each produce a prescription ahead of the pass.

The crown assumes a qualifying sprayer and a paid license for in-crop passes, and the Iowa State savings shrank where weed pressure was high. For a farm with that sprayer and a herbicide bill to cut, we weigh the during-pass decision above an earlier prescription, because See & Spray applies its own detection at the nozzle in the same pass and Iowa State recorded the herbicide reduction that produced on an Ultimate machine.

Choose FieldView when the farm runs machinery from several makers and you want treatments planned from its field records and field-health imagery, with scouting pins shared across the operation. Its Operations Center connection and its in-cab device carry those plans and records between the office and the cab.

An advisor, or a grower working with one, should choose Taranis when the job is to have fields flown and weeds identified at leaf level by a service, then to edit a prescription by species and zone. Settle the receiving end before you subscribe, down to the display that reads the shapefile and the sprayer that applies it.

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