On Thursday, John Deere Chairman and CEO John May became the first agriculture technology company executive to take the main stage for a keynote at a CES event, the tech industry’s top trade show. While there in Las Vegas, Deere unveiled ExactShot, a technology that uses sensors and robotics to place starter fertilizer precisely onto seeds as they are planted in the soil, rather than applying a continuous flow of fertilizer to the entire row of seeds.
Deere estimates that ExactShot will allow farmers to reduce the amount of starter fertilizer needed during planting by more than 60 percent.
During this keynote address at CES 2023, May and fellow Deere executives spoke significantly about the future of agriculture and construction being less about the size of the machine and more about the technology that’s implemented.
“Everything we do at John Deere is focused on real purpose and real impact,” said Jahmy Hindman, chief technology officer at John Deere. “This means we’re developing technology that enables our customers to provide the food, fuel, fiber and infrastructure that our growing global population needs.”
ExactShot uses a sensor to register when each individual seed is in the process of going into the soil. As this occurs, it will spray only the amount of fertilizer needed, about 0.2 ML, directly onto the seed at the exact moment as it goes into the ground.
Across the U.S. corn crop, ExactShot could save over 93 million gallons of starter fertilizer annually and prevent wasted fertilizer from encouraging weed growth or increasing the risk of running off the field into a waterway, Deere said in a news release.
The expectations is that ExactShot will help farmers be economically and environmentally sustainable, which becomes vital with the global population expected to grow from 8 billion to nearly 10 billion by 2050, and farmers needing to increase production by 60 percent to 70 percent on today’s arable land.
May’s keynote can be seen here in full:
