Nick Guetterman, a farmer from Bucyrus, Kan., who farms 16,000 acres, and John Fulton, a professor at Ohio State Univ. and president of the International Society of Precision Agriculture, discuss the opportunities & challenges farmers face with adopting autonomous technology.

It’s planting season, which means a lot of the technology we spotlight on this program is being used in the field as we speak. I paid a visit to Eagle, Wis., farmer Tyler Troiola who’s using John Deere See and Spray for the first time this growing season. He says it took his dealer about 2 solid weeks to install the system on his 2018 John Deere sprayer.

Carbon Robotics’ LaserWeeder has been proven by top farmers to reduce weed control costs by 80 percent and significantly increase crop yield and quality.

The lightweight, electric-powered, autonomous planter no-tilled soybeans and strip-tilled corn in Webster County, Iowa.

Today, we’re looking at Austria-based Pessl Instruments, an agtech provider operating under the METOS brand. Irrigation equipment manufacturer Lindsay Corporation recently acquired a minority interest in Pessl Instruments following a strategic partnership the 2 companies announced in May 2023.

As startups and major OEMs alike strive to innovate and scale, the roadmap laid out by Elon Musk for rocket engineering offers some insightful guidelines, particularly for those venturing into autonomous farm machinery.

Rootwave’s approach appealed to Jorge Heraud because of the way the company uses electricity. “I was looking for alternative ways of killing weeds, given that chemistry is not going to work forever,” he says.