For centuries, weeds have been a pressing concern for farmers. The earliest developed weed control technology was plowing and hand-weeding. This involved farmers hand-pulling and cutting weeds with knives, hoes, and mattocks. This method of farming is physically demanding and time consuming, and it rarely succeeds in eliminating all weeds.

Herbicides were later introduced to help alleviate the impact of weeds and pests on crops, and for many decades, the only way to distribute it was to treat the entire field. However, in doing so, herbicide can be wasted and placed on other areas where it’s not needed. This is where technology can change the game.

Precision has always been prioritized by farmers. As weeds continue to threaten crops and rising temperatures accelerate their growth, farmers are increasingly turning to advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision, to manage weeds more efficiently and cost-effectively. This enables them to continue farming the food that our growing world population needs to thrive while remaining good stewards of the land, which is core to being a farmer.

Cutting the problem at the source

Image courtesy of John Deere.

Imagine a conference room filled with people. One person is sick, but instead of treating just the infected individual, everyone is given medicine, which is both wasteful and inefficient. Similarly in agriculture, while a majority of a field may not have weeds present, historically the entire field would still be sprayed with herbicides despite the number of healthy plants present. 

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Farmers who target weeds at the source can produce healthy, successful crops with less waste. Cutting-edge AI and computer vision technologies have made this possible by enabling farmers to identify and precisely spray individual weeds without damaging surrounding crops.

AI and computer vision are evolving farm practices

A sprayer is a farm vehicle that applies herbicides across a field to eliminate weeds. Today’s AI-enabled, highly intelligent sprayers feature a boom, the piece of equipment where nozzles are spread evenly across to distribute the herbicide to the weeds, that can be up to 120 feet wide. Cameras and processors also reside on the boom as it moves through the field, helping the farmer “see” well beyond what the naked eye can. With automated driving technology that uses a combination of GPS tech and correction signals, these advanced robots are guided through the field with extreme precision – down to the centimeter – ensuring crops aren’t damaged and the farmer can focus on the task at hand: spraying.

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Cameras attached to the boom can scan two thousand square feet of land in 1 second, processing what’s being captured to decide when to apply herbicide. Each image plays a critical role in calculating the position of a weed and taking action.

Computer vision and AI evaluate each image using a machine learning model trained with millions of images. This advanced robot is only getting smarter with time. With thousands of types of weeds and varying growing practices, the machine is constantly learning. The more photos that are collected, the more accurate the technology gets, as it adapts to different field conditions, plant growth stages, the impact of different weather like rain or hail, and more.

Benefits of sprayers on the farm

Farmers might run a sprayer across their field more than ten times during a typical growing season. And we’re not talking about your backyard garden – these farms are the size of a small city and there’s millions of plants within them. This is why precision is everything in agriculture. By enabling farmers to detect where weeds are growing and apply treatment only where needed, farmers can cut their herbicide use by two-thirds. Not only does that increase sustainability on the farm, but it can have a dramatic impact on a farmer’s bottom line if they can reduce the number of inputs needed to run their operation.  

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The AI-enabled future of the modern farm

The world population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050, and as diets continue to improve, farmers will need to produce 50 percent more food. To feed the rising population, farmers will continue to lean on advanced technology to give them every advantage in the challenging environment that they work in. AI and computer vision will help farmers achieve enhanced precision when applying herbicides, which enables greater profitability and sustainability.