The Saskatoon company’s camera-based system mounts on a sprayer boom and captures field conditions as farmers make passes across the field. Using machine learning, it analyzes thousands of images to generate crop and weed maps, along with plant stand counts.

The system was first introduced in a limited rollout in 2022 and went through on-farm testing before expanding more broadly. Early versions were installed on a small number of farms to gather data and refine the technology.

“We spend a couple of years using the product in the field before it’s commercialized,” CEO Cory Willness said.

“By the time something gets commercialized, it has already been used internally and has been through pretty rigorous testing.”

Adding in-season data to zone maps

SWAT Cam is designed to complement the company’s core SWAT Maps platform, which divides fields into management zones based on soil, water and topography. While those maps are relatively static, SWAT Cam adds a layer of in-season observation.

As the sprayer moves through the field, cameras mounted on the boom capture images every 50 to 60 feet. Those images are processed to measure plant populations and identify weed pressure and are then overlaid onto existing zone maps.

“It’s really a tool that uses the SWAT Map as the base underneath to define what’s happening in different areas of the field,” he said.

The system is not designed to make real-time decisions. Instead, it provides information that farmers and agronomists can use to evaluate performance and adjust management in future seasons.

For example, growers can use the data to compare expected and actual plant stands or identify patterns in crop performance across different parts of a field. In some cases, that can lead to changes in seeding rates or other input decisions.

“It’s information that helps them make better decisions in the future,” he said.

“It’s like a quick check-up tool.”

Adoption to date has been concentrated in Western Canada, where the company operates both directly with farmers and through a partner network.

The technology can be used on crops such as canola, wheat and soybeans, although its effectiveness depends on crop stage and canopy conditions.

The milestone offers a snapshot of how Croptimistic’s platform is expanding beyond its original focus on soil-based mapping.

In recent months, the company has introduced a series of new initiatives aimed at building out that platform, including SWAT Labs, an in-house soil testing facility, and a white paper outlining its approach to regenerative agriculture.

Together, those efforts point to two sides of the company’s development — expanding its core services while building new tools and frameworks around them.

“We have what I call an innovation engine and a business engine,” Willness said.

SWAT Labs is an example of the “business engine,” reflecting an effort to bring more of the soil data pipeline under one roof, from sampling through analysis.

The white paper, meanwhile, falls under “innovation,” and signals a push to shape how that data is interpreted and used in agronomic decision-making.

“These initiatives are building toward bigger things,” he said.

CLARIFICATION, April 7, 2026: Cory Willness’ name was accidentally left out of the print version of this article in the April 9 issue. We regret the error.

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At the time, the company said it was working on expanding the system’s functionality to other crops.

Deere has now made good on that promise. For 2027 model year machines, it will be compatible with wheat, barley and canola.

“For model year ’27 we have a really exciting upgrade for our small grains customers,” says Joshua Ladd, marketing manager for application equipment.

“This year we’re ecstatic to roll out our small grains functionality for wheat, canola and barley in crop, and we expanded the lineup for our variable rate function for later season passes with desiccation pre-harvest passes.”

All three levels of See and Spray (Select, Premium and Ultimate) are now integrated into the same basic platform. That gives buyers more customization options, such as opting for single or dual-tank capability.

The second generation Gen 2 version also includes changes that give it improved performance over the original Gen 1 release.

Notably, the location of the boom’s centre cameras has been moved to reduce the number of times they unnecessarily revert to full broadcast mode because of vision obstructions.

“The most consistent thing we saw for a fall-back trigger was on the centre of the machine because there were four cameras tucked in on the centre behind the rear tires,” says Ladd.

“The dust they kicked up would occlude the cameras….

“With Gen 2, it’s still 36 cameras, but for those four cameras that were on the centre frame behind the tires, we’ve now located those to the front. (Moving) the four cameras to the front should significantly reduce the dust issue.”

The new hardware for the Gen 2 system is lighter and reduces weight stress on the boom.

“We’ve now gone from 10 processors to three,” he adds.

“We now have a combination of three processors and five video extenders (VEX). The VEX is overall a lighter component than the processor.”

With that lighter load, Deere can now offer full boom lighting to allow green-on-brown operation after dark in fallow fields. The brand is working on making the green-on-green system usable at night, but so far it isn’t.

See and Spray will also be compatible with a wider range of nozzle options.

“We can use our rear-incline nozzle to achieve a See and Spray speed of 16 m.p.h.,” says Ladd.

“We’re now approved to work with straight-down nozzles, though it does reduce the operational speed down to 12 m.p.h.

“Previously we said you had to use a specific category of nozzles, so we’re now widening that a bit, giving customers flexibility in nozzles they like to use for their operation.”

Deere will continue to offer the See and Spray system on a subscription basis, which Ladd says helps reduce the initial purchase cost.

The Gen 2 system will be available on 408R, 410R, 412R, 612R, and 616R sprayers, as well as all Hagie sprayers, the STS12, STS16, and STS20 for model year 2027.

Also, a new four-wheel steering feature will be an option on the 400 Series chassis, something that was previously available only on the Hagie sprayer lineup.

For those who would like to add targeted spraying to their operation but don’t want to fork out the cost of an entirely new machine, Deere is offering a See and Spray Select upgrade kit for some previous model year machines.

The Gen 2 See and Spray technology will be on display in John Deere’s exhibit at the Ag in Motion farm show this summer.

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“It basically takes a traditional sprayer and increases its capacity by 25 or 30 per cent, because we can make it fill so fast. That’s been our big thing. (Demand) is rapidly growing.”

The company has now designed a trailer intended to cater to the emerging trend of handling broad-acre spraying with drones, bringing efficiencies to that operation as well.

Friesen says he believes drone spraying will soon become one of the fastest-growing segments in the ag equipment sector, citing the fact two of today’s large application drones working together can keep up with a standard field sprayer.

“Now, we’re getting into the drone industry as well,” he says. “Our first production trailers are just coming off the line now.

“This trailer will replace what a typical ground sprayer will do in acres per hour. We’ve built the infrastructure to support those drones. We have a whole lineup of drone stuff coming.

“I actually expect this (Dash trailers) to be our largest product line in the years to come.”

PhiBer has seen steadily increasing demand for its Dash trailers, earth-moving products and hay tools in the past few years. As a result, the company has embarked on an ambitious building project, adding a 60,000-square foot production facility to its current manufacturing footprint at Crystal City, Man., about 130 km southwest of Portage la Prairie.

PhiBer will also roughly double its workforce once the new building is completed.

“We’ve been going through extreme growth in the last number of years,” he says. “I think our four-year average is 48 per cent growth year over year.”

Depending on the configuration, a Dash trailer can carry different sizes of plastic product tanks, which PhiBer currently imports from the U.S. However, the new facility will be home to a very large plastic molding system, which is capable of forming tanks of up to 5,000 gallons for installation on Dash trailers, as well as forming even larger permanent on-site storage tanks.

“There are only two machines in Canada that are big enough to do what we need,” Friesen says. “Right now it’s all being done in the States, and we want to bring it back to Canada. So the largest machine in Canada will be here.”

The new building will also house three automated laser parts-cutting systems to speed up manufacturing.

PhiBer has chosen to market its equipment direct to farmers instead of retailing through a dealer network. That, Friesen says, helps the company keep sticker prices as low as possible, cutting out the middleman.

To handle sales, the company has setup a new AI-assisted website that will allow interested farmers to configure a Dash tender trailer with exactly the right setup to meet their needs.

“One of the unique things is we go direct to customers with our products, aside from the hay tools which are sold through OEM channels,” Friesen says. “We have an online presence. We’ve now launched a digital platform where people can get a quote and build a trailer in the system and place their order, buying parts — it’s all done through e-commerce if they want.

“We’re not trying to replace people but create a tool to connect with people. Guys can create and design an entire trailer system themselves online. They can build their dream system. There are over 3.5 million ways we can configure a Dash trailer. It’s all very customizable.”

Customers can also contact the company directly by phone for assistance in designing a Dash if they prefer.

The Dash trailer system has become PhiBer’s keystone product, and with increasing demand the company has now set up companies in the U.S. and Australia to keep up with international sales. Those foreign sales are key to PhiBer’s expansion.

“We’ve been selling into the U.S. for a number of years, and it remains a big part of our market,” he says. “It’s our No. 1 growth opportunity despite some of the political challenges.”

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“He said, ‘Hey, I gotta show you something at my farm,’” Beres, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada in Lethbridge, recalls. “So he grabbed me, jumped in his truck and we drove over.”

Halford is no ordinary farmer. He’s a zero-till pioneer and inventor. He made headlines in 2007, when he sold the technology for the ConservaPak air seeder to John Deere. He was inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame in 2021.

Halford showed Beres a retrofitted swather with a spray boom and tank, and a cart towed behind for water and herbicide solution.

“He’d done the homework,” Beres says. “It worked.”

What Halford had done — spraying pre-seed herbicide at the same time as swathing his canola — wasn’t just a clever labour-saver. It was a potential solution to one of the biggest obstacles preventing more Prairie farmers from growing winter wheat: timing.

From Down Under to the drawing board

Halford first got the idea after visiting Australia. It turns out Prairie farmers aren’t the only ones looking for ways to save time at harvest. Some innovative farmers down under were using a technique that let them spray and swath at the same time.

“I didn’t see it actually operating — they just talked about it,” Halford says. So, when he got back to Canada, he got to work on a prototype based on what he’d heard.

He retrofitted his self-propelled swather with a spray boom that reached under and behind, where the swath dropped. He towed a two-wheeled tank behind to carry enough water to make the setup work at field scale. He was convinced it could offer a better way to control weeds and preserve soil moisture at a critical time of year, when growers are swamped with harvest and field work.

“We realized the benefits of it, and that’s why we were working on it,” Halford says. “If you knock your weeds out as soon as you get an opportunity, you’re going to start saving moisture.”

His goal wasn’t to launch a product — though he said that might have happened if he’d stayed in the seeder business, but that option wasn’t available once he sold the ConservaPak seeder technology to John Deere.

Some assembly required

While both Halford and Beres say the retrofit isn’t especially complex or costly, the study didn’t offer step-by-step retrofit instructions. That said, Halford’s prototype proves it’s doable for those willing to experiment with their equipment.

“You’ve just got to get the boom under the centre, where your crop is coming out of the swather,” Halford says. “We had a tank on a cart behind, and a boom tucked underneath — even under the middle.”

The key, he says, was making sure the boom delivered consistent spray coverage under the swath.

After seeing the prototype, Beres folded Halford’s design into a funding proposal for a sequencing study with winter wheat and canola.

“This is one of the best examples I’ve seen of how farmer-led ideas can feed into large-scale agronomic research,” Beres says. “Jim showed us it could work at scale, and our job was to build the science around it.”

Eliminating a field pass

The study focused on finding ways to streamline fall operations so farmers could more easily seed winter wheat following canola. In many regions, that tight window is a key reason growers hesitate to plant winter cereals.

To address that squeeze, researchers explored whether the swathing and pre-seed herbicide pass for winter wheat could be done at the same time, using Halford’s concept. Across multiple sites, they retrofitted field-scale swathers with onboard spray systems.

For their plot-scale equipment, Beres’ team was able to mount tanks directly on the swather. Beres noted they were still using commercial swathers on their big agronomy plots. They were just narrower, at 15 feet wide. And the retrofit was done at a modest price.

“The only difference between us and Jim is that we could mount the tank onto the swather,” he says.

It worked. The study showed strong weed control and no need for an additional fall herbicide application.

And importantly, when researchers worked with the Canadian Grain Commission to test the highest-risk samples, they found no glyphosate residue in most of the harvested canola. In one or two cases, trace amounts were detected, but well below the maximum residue limits (MRLs) set by the government of Canada to protect market access.

Yield bump, fewer passes

One surprise was how well winter wheat performed after swathed canola, compared to straight cut.

“We saw a yield bump with swathing,” Beres says. “We don’t know why, but it’s probably related to conserving soil moisture.”

Halford’s own experience backed that up. Though he didn’t conduct formal trials, he left unsprayed check strips in his fields and says the benefits were clear.

“The weed control was excellent,” Halford says. “We saw a big difference, especially with fall-germinating weeds that would otherwise be taking up moisture.”

Beres emphasizes the system also has potential to reduce herbicide use beyond the fall season. Because winter wheat is highly competitive, in-crop spraying often isn’t needed — particularly if the fall application is well timed.

“If you did something like a 2,4-D application in mid-October, when winter annuals start to emerge, that might be all you need,” said Beres. “We’ve shown that in multiple studies.”

Swathing versus straight cutting: the debate isn’t over

For years, western Canadian growers have increasingly moved away from swathing in favour of straight cutting. This is especially true in brown-soil zones where crop height and yield potential tend to be lower. But Beres said attitudes may be starting to shift.

“We’re seeing some pushback,” Beres says. “Guys who tried straight cutting are going back to swathing. When you’ve got a heavy crop, it can be hard to get the timing right across the field.”

That inconsistency can delay harvest and jeopardize the window for planting winter wheat, especially in regions where fall weather tends to be less forgiving.

The study also addressed a common hesitation about swathing: concerns about pod shatter. But researchers used pod shatter reduction hybrids and saw no issues in either standing or swathed canola. “We really wanted to verify that those traits work when integrated into a systems study, and they do,” Beres says. “It’s one more concern we were able to take off the table.”

An idea with agronomic legs — even as research wanes

Though Beres says the swather-sprayer concept is ready for farmers to test on their own operations, he doesn’t expect much further work on winter wheat out west — at least not any time soon.

“There’s a lack of interest in funding winter wheat agronomy, largely because of the low acreage versus spring wheat, so impact from agronomy can be tenfold or more in spring versus winter wheat, so it makes more sense to fund and conduct research in a spring wheat system,” he says. “This study, and another we published earlier this year, are kind of the swan song for large-scale winter wheat agronomy in our program.”

That other study looked at crop rotations leading into winter wheat and showed that pulses like lentil and soybean actually outperform canola in some cases. Like this study, it confirmed winter wheat’s strong fit in Prairie systems, even if it’s often overlooked.

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Fair enough, because the Nexat is like no other conventional field machine. It’s an implement carrier designed to handle every field operation from seeding to harvesting and work in a controlled traffic plan to minimize soil compaction.

Grainews spent a day in the field near Elie, Man., with the first Nexat to come to Canada. Elie will be the location for the company’s first Canadian sales and service hub, where the company expects to begin selling the Nexat in time for the 2026 season.

The Nexat was planting soybeans as the machine begins its first full season of proving itself in a Canadian field, although a total of 18 prototypes are now already working in fields in Europe and South America. In all, field trials have been ongoing for about seven years.

“It’s the first spring for us in Canada,” Nexat’s founder and CEO Klemens Kalverkamp says. “We were seeding in the U.S. last year and since 2019 in Ukraine. So it’s the sixth year for planting and seeding.”

The Germany-based company builds the basic machine and has looked to specialist manufacturers to design and supply all the implements it uses to do field work, picking those companies whose implements Kalverkamp feels best suit agriculture on the continent where they’ll be used.

The exception to that is the combine attachment, which Nexat designed and built in-house.

“For the combine unit, there are no mid-size partners in ag tech,” Kalverkamp says. “In all the other products we are working together with mid-size innovative companies.”

Using those attachments designed by partner companies, the Nexat is able to completely replace a conventional tractor and combine. “The basic principle is you just need one machine to do all the jobs, seeding, planting, spraying, tillage and harvesting.”

Advantages

But Kalverkamp believes the Nexat does more than provide an alternative to traditional tractor and implement designs by offering advantages those machines can’t match.

By carrying the implement — and, in the case of the seed drill, the product tanks — draught and wheel slippage are reduced, improving fuel efficiency.

“We have less fuel consumption, less complexity,” Kalverkamp says. “At the end of the day it’s a simple machine, very service-friendly. Every service technician can change any part with a digital animation.”

The company provides that digital service information.

The simplicity comes from a dual-engine drive system, each powering an electrical generator that drives four electric motors on the track modules.

“All the (electric) motors are the same,” he says. “With modern tractors if you have a problem in the gearbox, it takes two days to fix it. To take out and replace an electrical motor is done in four hours. And it can be done by any average service technician.”

Each diesel engine is rated at 550 horsepower, but some operations, such as seeding or spraying, will only require running one of them. The combine attachment would need power from both, due to its higher demand for horsepower.

The current Nexat model uses two Leibherr diesels, which are popular in trucks and construction equipment in Europe. But the company expects to be able to offer North American buyers the option of replacing them with Cummins engines.

“We’re not just thinking about how we can make the tractor or combine better,” Kalverkamp says. “We’re thinking about how we can improve the whole process.”

Related: Check out the NEXAT All-in-One Crop Production System System Specifications

As he sees it, one of the biggest advantages the Nexat offers is its ability to allow farmers to improve soil conditions. Using a controlled traffic pattern with its tracks — or optional wheels — always following in the same path, roughly 95 per cent of the field surface remains untouched. That significantly reduces compaction problems.

“After 40 years of travelling around to farms all around the world, I recognized that there is one problem everywhere, and that is compaction. In the last five years I’ve thought a lot about the soil (and how to rejuvenate it).”

As the Nexat runs through the field, steering itself and guided by GPS, the cab can be pivoted to the rear. That allows the operator to observe the back of the machine and monitor implement operation from a perspective not available from a regular tractor cab.

Inside the cab, the sound level is remarkably low, because the engines are several feet away on the main body of the machine. The operator can move the cab through an arc of more than 180 degrees.

For roading, the tracks or wheels pivot 90 degrees, creating an overall travel width of just 12 feet — and it can hit a top speed of 40 km/h. To help back it into tight spaces, the Nexat can be controlled with a wireless remote control.

“It’s the first holistic, planned production system, we call it,” Kalverkamp says. “It’s not just a machine. It’s much more. With our technology we want to enable farmers to make more profit, have better soil condition with less erosion and putting C0₂ back into the ground. And we’ve proven we can do this.”

The K-Hart drill

Anyone whose been to a western Canadian farm show recently may have noticed the K-Hart Spyder seed drill on display. While arguably not yet a household name in the seeding sector compared to other brands, K-Hart is the partner chosen to supply the seed drill attachment for the Nexat in this country.

“In Canada we’re working together with K-Hart,” Kalverkamp says, “because K-Hart has openers with minimum soil disturbance at the surface. In a dry spring like this, it’s very important.”

The K-Hart drill design impressed Kalverkamp, who says he only wants to partner with shortlines that are innovative to develop attachments for the Nexat.

“We worked with Nexat to help bridge the gap between our current design and a design that fits on the Nexat unit,” says the director of engineering at K-Hart Industries, Erron Leafloor. “This is the second prototype. The first one ran in Europe last fall.”

The drill attaches to the Nexat with standard category 4 three-point hitch connections, for a straightforward attachment process.

“Probably most of the time is just hooking up air hoses,” Leafloor says. “At one single bank you have all the electrical and hydraulics connected.”

The K-Hart attachment uses the same double-disc opener found on the brand’s own Spyder drill.

“The core (opener) technology we use at K-Hart is through another partnership we have with Tony Gent out of the U.K.,” Leafloor says. “It’s a very unique concept of the double disc but at an angle so you don’t get sidewall compaction. That helps with root growth. The root can actually grow in both directions.”

Although the Nexat’s rigid frame spans the entire 45-foot working width of the drill, the openers get a total of nearly two feet of vertical travel to contour across irregular field surfaces.

“We have the openers on a traditional parallel link,” Leafloor says. “But on top of that, the entire frame is on a parallel link. With the smaller (frame) sections you can travel in and out of ditches. Each of these sections will travel an additional approximately 13 inches.

A front row of coulters delivers fertilizer in a mid-row banding style. It’s also possible to deliver a starter course into the trench with the seed.

Rather than pull an air cart, the product tanks ride above the drill, and the company expects to offer total comparable capacity to a conventional prairie drill setup to maintain seeding efficiency.

The product and seed storage bins and delivery system are provided by Vaderstad. The distribution system, meanwhile, is a K-Hart design.

Hitting the market

Kalverkamp says the company expects its initial sales will be to early adopters. A few of those have already contacted the company.

“We were looking for the best reference farmers,” he says. “A ‘reference farmer,’ in our way of thinking, is progressive, a first-mover. They’re using the latest technology to keep on the (cutting) edge of their business.

“Our business philosophy is long-term. We want to make customers happy. If they’re not, we’ll take back the machine.”

While the Nexat basically runs on its own at the moment, with little for the operator to do, the company expects to make the operator’s cab redundant within the next three years. It’s planning to introduce a fully autonomous version by 2028.

The Nexat was designed with full autonomy in mind right from the start, Kalverkamp says.

This November, at Agritechnica in Germany, the company will debut a 90-foot model, which may be available to Canadian buyers for next season.

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New Holland said in a news release that in 2024, Kansas State University and CNH partnered to conduct field trials evaluating the performance of IntelliSense sprayer automation’s nitrogen VRA (variable rate application) function in corn. The findings revealed an approximate 10 per cent savings in applied N compared to a constant broadcast rate.

It can “identify and automatically apply the most appropriate amount of nitrogen within the prescribed rate range according to the assessed plant biomass health,” the company said.

IntelliSense also offers green-on-brown spot spray technology and can detect weeds smaller than two inches in height. It also offers a “base and boost” feature. When making a broadcast application, that setting can boost a localized spray where larger weeds are detected.

IntelliSense will be available as a factory-fit option on model year 2026 Guardian Series front boom sprayers, including the SP310F, SP370F and SP410F.

Another New Holland IntelliSense system, an automation option available for the company’s High-Density (HD) Big Baler, was announced in March as one of three winners of the Davidson Prize.

Those winners are picked from the entries put forward for the AE50, an annual roster of 50 deserving ag engineering products. The Davidson Prize winners are chosen by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) with the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM).

In that system, first announced in January last year, the IntelliSense system’s LiDAR sensor is mounted on the roof of a tractor and emits laser pulses at the upcoming swath, measuring its size, shape and density and adjusting the tractor’s forward speed and steering and the baler feed rate accordingly.

Those adjustments help prevent plugging, increase fuel efficiency and improve bales’ shape and consistent slice size.

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“For 2026 we’re advancing our automation features on our combines,” says Bergen Nelson, go-to-market manager for harvesting equipment at John Deere. “Model year ’25 was a big year for both X9 and S Series, introducing ground speed automation and harvest setting automation.”

The new capabilities add to what those automated systems initially offered.

Predictive ground speed automation, included in the brand’s Ultimate Technology package, uses information from cameras and predictive yield maps based on satellite views from the John Deere Operations Centre to optimize the combine’s ground speed.

To that automation, the 2026 combines add a new weed detection feature.

“Cameras on the front of the combine can now see the weed pressure in the field and the combine will speed up or slow down based on that,” Nelson says. “We know if we approach a weedy patch in the field, we need to slow down. In addition, the system will give a weed pressure map in the John Deere Operations Centre.”

Although these features are being launched for 2026, they can be added to a model year ’25 machine that includes the Ultimate package with cameras.

“They’ll need the Ultimate combine license, which will include predictive ground speed automation, harvest settings automation and all the G5 advanced features we have available today,” Nelson says.

A new feature for the harvest automation system is the out-of-crop adjustment. When the combine reaches a headland, or some other area of the field where there is no crop coming into it, the chaffer, sieve and fan speed will adjust to avoid blowing grain out the back of the machine.

Machine Sync, which allows a combine operator to control a grain cart during unloading, gets an update also.

“Now with combine auto unload, we’re putting a camera on the unloading auger,” Nelson says.”The camera will be calibrated to the grain cart and automatically move it forward or backward, eliminating that step from the combine operator.”

Up front, there are new header options.

“We have a huge update to the front-end equipment, which is really geared toward the western producer,” Nelson says. “Our three-piece reel is new for 2026, building on the foundation of our HDF and HDR heads. They’ll be compatible with the three-piece reel.

“The three-piece reel really gives us the ability to maintain a consistent cutter bar-to-reel relationship as the wings flex. In the past, as the wings would flex you’d have a gap in the centre section. Now that’s eliminated.”

The three-piece reel also has additional tines, leaving only four inches between each one. That equates to 32 per cent more tines across the head, allowing it to better pull in crop. The new reel is retrofittable to any of Deere’s HDF, HDR or RDF headers.

Sprayers

Sprayers get some technology upgrades as well.

See and Spray Select, which has been available for spot-spraying weeds in fallow fields, gets expanded capabilities for model year ’26. It can now also be used to apply variable-rate chemicals in late-season fungicide, desiccant and pre-harvest passes through the crop.

Growers can see the percentage of biomass each camera detects throughout the field. Each camera rates the amount of green biomass detected and varies the volume of product applied by percentage. An operator can then adjust how much product to apply on an individual nozzle-level basis.

Variable rate capabilities will require a G5 or G5 Plus CommandCenter display.

“See and Spray Select has primarily been used for fallow applications for green weeds against brown or black soils,” says Deere’s go-to-market manager for application products, Josh Ladd. “New for this year, however, we introduced variable rate for later season fungicide, desiccation, PGR-type products, where the operator can set the band of application and the target application rate.

“Using the cameras and processors, the machine will automatically adjust the rate of application to ensure we’re putting the right amount of product down across every acre of every field.

“With later-season passes, with a lot of the Canadian producers we’ve spoken with, the general sentiment has been we’re going to spray at our target rate, but we know for certain on some acres we may need more or less. For a while, there’s never really been an option, unless they’re running off a prescription map. Now with See and Spray Select, we’re able to do that in real time.”

The brand also announced it will expand its turn automation feature to sprayers.

AutoTrac Turn Automation will be available for 2026 sprayers in both the Deere and Hagie brands. It helps ensure consistent and accurate turns at the end of each pass, taking some of the pressure off operators and allowing them to focus on watching boom positions and obstacles. It also reduces crop trampling.

“A lot of our customers have likely experienced this capability on some of our other Deere products,” Ladd says. “We also introduced AutoTrac Vision 2.0. It’s a new system for model year ’26 John Deere sprayers. It uses a stereo and mono camera in combination to keep the sprayer pinpoint-precise on the row up to 22 m.p.h. to limit crop damage.”

AutoTrac Vision 2.0 can detect crop heights as short as four inches and late-season canopy coverage up to 90 per cent, allowing it to function accurately throughout the growing season and keep wheels positioned in the tracks or between rows.

“A lot of those features will come standard on model year ’26 sprayers from the factory.”

A new precision upgrade kit for See and Spray Select is available for Deere sprayers going back to the 2018 model year.

Rate controller

Deere also used the Denver show to announce the release of its new Rate Controller 3. It has an option to control two liquid and/or anhydrous ammonia (NH₃) products for up to 16 sections. It replaces the GreenStar controller the brand has been offering.

“Now customers can have a rate controller app that is easy to set up,” says Christopher Murray, technology marketer for John Deere. “Canadian growers can not only use this on John Deere equipment, like a planter or seeder, but on third-party tools as well.”

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Wolf, who has 35 years of experience in the spraying business and uses @nozzleguy as his X (Twitter) handle, spent most of his 40-minute talk on the “cons” of spraying with drones.

He’s concerned about the risk of drift from drones and explained, with supporting data, that it’s difficult to get a consistent swath, or spray, width from a drone.

The focus on “cons” prompted a comment from a person in the audience at CropConnect, a crop industry conference held Feb. 12-13 in Winnipeg.

“The title of this presentation was The Pros and Cons of Drone Spraying, but I didn’t hear the first part,” the audience member said.

The comment provoked a smile from Wolf, who admitted that some farmers are seeing value from spraying crops with drones.

Wolf, who hosts and writes for the world’s No. 1 sprayer website, Sprayers101.com, has spoken with Canadian growers to understand why they like the technology.

“They say no tracks (on the field) and no big bill from my aerial applicator … and I got my fungicide sprayed,” Wolf said.

“There is a logistical reason that these things are popular.”

READ MORE: Don’t hold your breath for a drone sprayer

However, farmers who are happy with drone spraying probably don’t have data on the efficacy of the technology, he said. They don’t really know if it’s better or worse than aerial spraying or using a self-propelled sprayer.

“Let’s go back to the initial question I posed: is this (drone spraying) making things better?” Wolf said.

“That’s really the question.”

Swath width

At CropConnect, Wolf explained that a spraying technologies are evaluated on four criteria: productivity, water volume, spray quality and deposit uniformity.

“Water volume and droplet size are the coverage part of the equation,” he said. “Deposit uniformity is just the overall quality. Are we doing the same thing on the left, middle and right side of the spray swath, for example.”

Wolf and one of his research colleagues, Jason Deveau, have done experiments in Ontario to evaluate the consistent of drones for swath width and the uniformity of the application.

Deveau is an application technology specialist with Ontario Agriculture.

In an ideal world, as the sprayer or drone travels back and forth across a field, the spray width should be consistent.

“If you buy a 120’ sprayer boom, how wide is your swath? 120 feet,” Wolf said.

“If you buy a T50 drone, how wide is your swath? Nobody knows.”

To answer that question, Deveau and Wolf laid a strip of paper across a test field near Simcoe, Ont. and flew a spray drone over the strip.

The tank in the drone contained water with a dye, which becomes visible on the strip of paper.

Deveau used a device called the Swath Gobbler to scan the paper and measure the performance of the drone.

“We can get droplet number and droplet coverage out of it,” said Wolf, who showed the results of those tests in Winnipeg.

They found that swath width and deposit uniformity is highly inconsistent. It can change as the drone flies over the crop and vary greatly, in a few minutes of time.

The swath width depends on drone height, water volume, flying speed, side wind, headwind, downwind and other factors.

One set of data showed that a professional pilot, flying a drone at 3.0 m of height, 30 km per hour and delivering three gallons per acre, produced three different results in a short period of time:

• Repetition 1: swath width of 6.5 m (21 feet)

• Rep 2: 30 min later, 7.0 m (23 feet)

• Rep 3: 30 min later, 5.0 m (16 feet)

“We have variability, even within a short distance,” he said. “Do not just take someone’s word, that you have a 29-foot swath (width). The price of not having a 29-foot swath is striping.”

Striping is duplicating spray on the same strip of crop.

Wolf is also worried about the increased risk of drift, from spraying with a drone. Then, there’s the possibility of accidents with other aircrafts and injuries to humans.

A lack of regulations is another issue.

“Anyone, here, can buy a drone today and fly it this afternoon,” he said. “I think we’re playing with something that is inevitably going to go south.”

Looking forward

Wolf concluded his talk with some optimism on how the technology could evolve.

Right now, most of the spray drones on the market were developed in Asia for application on small farms. Those drones aren’t suited for a 9,000-acre grain farm in Saskatchewan. Canadian producers will need larger drones, specifically designed for broad-acreage crops.

Those drones are starting to enter the market, Wolf said.

“I would say we’re at the very beginning of the drone story for spraying.”

The post The cons, cons, cons and pros of drone spraying appeared first on Grainews.

At the Commodity Classic farm show in Denver, Colorado, in early March, John Deere had several new machinery updates to announce. Here, Bergen Nelson, John Deere go-to-market-manager for harvest equipment, talks about new automation features and header design improvements for Deere combines, Christopher Murray, technology marketing for John Deere, talks about the new Rate Controller 3 for fertilizer applications that features a new rate controller app, and Josh Ladd, go-to-market-manager for John Deere application products shares sprayer improvements such as variable rate application for See & Spray Select.

The post VIDEO: John Deere product updates from the Commodity Classic farm show appeared first on Grainews.

That was the message from spray application specialist Tom Wolf, who spoke recently at the Manitoba Agronomists’ Conference. Wolf, from Saskatoon, is known for his contributions to Sprayers101.com, a website offering farmers expert spraying tips and the latest techniques.

“Being asked to speak about herbicide resistance as a spray application specialist is like asking a smoker to speak about lung health,” Wolf quipped. “The best thing we can do is stop spraying herbicides, because every application adds selection pressure — a truth you can’t circumvent.”

The problem, Wolf explained, is the creeping incrementalism of polygenic resistance.

“Polygenic resistance is the gradual, incremental accumulation of traits that give a plant slightly better tolerance to herbicide until it becomes resistant,” he said. “You’re not actually selecting for a pre-existing gene here; you’re just accumulating many traits.”

While true herbicide resistance, driven by genetic changes in the plant, cannot be overcome by any spraying technique, polygenic resistance offers opportunities for intervention. By adopting the right methods, farmers can improve coverage and delay the onset of polygenic resistance.

Improper herbicide application

Ineffective herbicide application — weeds either underdosed or missed — can accelerate polygenic herbicide resistance by allowing resistant weeds to survive and spread.

Wolf described a study where the effects of inconsistent herbicide application were examined. Even when the average herbicide rate was the same, variability in coverage resulted in poorer weed control. Underdosing came with significant penalties, while overdosing offered minimal benefit. As a result, overall herbicide effectiveness was lower with a variable application, despite maintaining the same average dose.

“The variability at depth also increases,” Wolf said. “If we have a canopy, we have to get to the weeds that are at the bottom; otherwise, the weeds are just simply not receiving the dose that we intend to give them.”

The best way to deal with that is to spray early, when the canopy is more open; that will give the grower a leg up in terms of coverage.

Another important consideration is the type of weed targeted. Broadleaf weeds are generally easier to hit, so spray quality can be more flexible — but for grassy weeds, using a coarse spray can lead to significant penalties. To achieve better coverage and potentially improve canopy penetration, it’s crucial to use a finer spray when targeting grassy weeds.

Water quality

Wolf also stressed the importance of water quality — particularly when using groundwater.

Hard water cations, such as calcium, magnesium, sodium, iron, and potassium, can bind to weak acid herbicides, reducing their effectiveness.

To address this, Wolf said the industry standard is to add ammonium sulfate to the water. The sulfate binds to the cations, forming an insoluble precipitate that prevents them from interacting with the herbicide. Meanwhile, the ammonium weakly binds to the herbicide, aiding its transport through plant membranes.

That process, known as ion trapping, causes the herbicide to accumulate inside the plant, enhancing its effectiveness, he explained.

Adding ammonium sulfate is generally considered the cheapest and most effective way to address water quality issues, but the view is not universally held. Wolf noted University of Guelph weed specialist Peter Sikkema argues that increasing the herbicide concentration can be more cost-effective — as long as it stays within the recommended label rates.

Making turns

When making turns with a spray boom or any implement, the outside edge of the turn receives a lower herbicide dose due to travelling faster, while the rate control remains consistent across the entire boom width, Wolf said.

“In a field where you’re making the same turn year after year, you’re underdosing the outside of that turn in the same location,” he said. “You will probably develop some kind of rate-related issues in those spots.”

Modern swath control systems, which shut off boom sections, further complicate the issue by preventing re-spraying in these areas.

The best way to address the issue is with pulse width modulation (PWM) — a standard feature on most modern sprayers. By applying PWM, the flow to each individual nozzle can be adjusted, ensuring more consistent coverage.

Boom stability

Wolf also pointed to an experiment that shone a light on the implications of boom stability. First, a very low boom height of 16 inches was tested. While most applications were within 15 per cent of average (the industry standard for consistency), some outliers occurred due to excessive boom sway, which caused striping.

Increasing the boom height to 32 inches, a more commonly used setting, improved coverage by better accommodating boom movement — but speed still affected uniformity, with higher speeds leading to more variable deposits.

“If you were to go to a DLG field day in Europe, the sprayers would all be driven down bumpy tracks, and there would be thousands of farmers watching,” Wolf said, referring to the organization that hosts Agritechnica.

Demonstrating boom stability on a rough track can be a useful test to hold manufacturers’ feet to the fire, he said.

“It is an absolutely a treacherous public relations moment, because there’s hundreds of cameras going,” said Wolf, who added he’d like to see these European practices make their way to this side of the pond.

“I’m trying to convince Ag in Motion to build a bumpy track.”

Wolf also pointed out the tradeoffs that come with boom height: higher booms increase wind displacement and turbulence, while lower booms reduce overlap and improve uniformity. Ultimately, maintaining low and consistent boom heights is a key factor in effective spraying.

Turbulence

Turbulence was another key point Wolf discussed in managing polygenic resistance. He shared the findings of a study funded by the Canola Council. The study found that one of the worst trials occurred when the sprayer (a John Deere R4045, using a medium spray) was moving at 18 miles per hour with a 40-inch boom height and showed tremendous variability in spray distribution — much worse than expected.

When they reduced speed to eight miles per hour and lowered the boom height to 26 inches, the results improved slightly but remained less than ideal, especially with wind interference.

This, Wolf noted, underscores the importance of spray quality for effective herbicide application — especially in windy conditions, when coarser sprays may be needed to make sure the herbicide is applied properly.

The Prairie Agriculture Machinery Institute (PAMI) then modelled the sprayer’s performance using CFD (computational fluid dynamics) and found turbulence from both the wheels and structural components of the boom.

“If we’re going to go this fast, we’re going to have to become more aerodynamic,” said Wolf.

Drones and beyond

While drones are not yet widely used for spraying in Canada, many of these considerations will apply when the practice begins to gain traction. But the most obvious challenge, again, is turbulence.

“Drones are always trying to maintain their position by altering the rotational speed of the various blades,” he explained. “So it has a highly variable flow, which could complicate spray quality.”

Wolfe also discussed the potential of AI-driven spot sprayers, which use advanced weed identification technology to target specific plants for treatment.

“I really do think that they will allow us to use multiple effective modes of action affordably,” he said.

The post Tackling herbicide resistance with smarter spraying appeared first on Grainews.