Farmers save 59% of herbicides through computer vision

Target Audience

Farmers, companies with the need for quality inspections

Challenge

Traditional broadcast spraying wastes enormous quantities of herbicides—farmers spend $25 billion annually on 3 billion pounds of herbicides, with research indicating as little as 1% of pesticides applied via broadcast actually reach the target pest. This leads to environmental pollution, herbicide resistance (250+ resistant weed species), and unnecessary costs.

Solution Approach

The system uses boom-mounted cameras that scan over 2,100 square feet of crop area per second. Images are processed with an AI, trained on over 1 million images. The AI distinguishes crops from weeds using technology similar to facial recognition, then precision nozzles spray only where weeds are detected.

Value Add

Their solutions saved farmers an estimated 8 million gallons of herbicide and delivered an average herbicide savings of 59%, as of 2024.

How to Apply This

Computer vision solutions offer you the possibility to create solutions for your own challenges using your own data. As this field of technology is very mature, good approaches require only limited efforts. Therefore, in the context of farming, the more challenging questions are: How to connect the physical and digital worlds?
Besides mounted cameras (as was used in this use case), you can think about leveraging autonomous drones or robots to get the required visual information. You can also think about further quality inspection challenges beyond farming (like in manufacturing, factories, or for security-checks) where you can apply these technologies. Anyways, on top to creating a strong and positive impact on the environment (as was shown in this use case), using computer vision provide you the possibility to save money and run inspections at high convenience.

Want to explore options to use computer vision in farming or other inspection scenarios? Reach out to me and book a free 30-minute feasibility call.