John Deere announced on 23 May the acquisition of Sentera, a leading provider of remote imagery solutions for agriculture, headquartered in St Paul, Minnesota.
This acquisition will add to John Deere’s existing technology offerings, aiming to provide farmers and agriculture service providers with a more comprehensive set of tools to generate and use data to make decisions that improve farm profitability, efficiency and sustainability.
“We’re excited to add Sentera’s talented team to our organisation and integrate their advanced solutions into the suite of John Deere tools that help farmers do more with less,” said Chris Winkler, director of digital software and solutions at John Deere.
He added: “Combining Sentera’s imagery capabilities with the John Deere Operations Center will enable farmers and trusted advisers to seamlessly gather and integrate agronomic data, understand real-time conditions and turn data into insights that drive decisions in the field throughout the growing season.”
Sentera’s cameras are compatible with most major drone platforms and are set to enable farmers and crop scouts to quickly and efficiently capture high-resolution data at scale.
Their capabilities and FieldAgent software tools help farmers and agronomists assess plant-level health, identify stressors and take action. In addition, Smartscript Weeds, a customised herbicide prescription, can be delivered to sprayers with individual nozzle control.
Drones
Drones equipped with Sentera technology fly over fields at high speeds and generate high-resolution images. These images are processed with Sentera’s FieldAgent application to identify the exact location of specific weeds and generate a weed map.
This map becomes a targeted prescription for how much product a farmer needs to load into their sprayer, helping minimise waste. Once the prescription is generated, it can be wirelessly sent to compatible equipment via the John Deere Operations Center.
The same process can be used in a field to assess crop stand uniformity, disease pressure and pests. Integrating Sentera also supports John Deere’s approach to meeting farmers where they are on the technology adoption journey.
It offers new precision capabilities to a broad range of customers while also complementing more advanced precision ag technologies, including See & Spray.
“As a customer of John Deere and Sentera today, the value of this integration is clear,” said Nick Einck, director of agronomy at Chandler Coop in Chandler, Minnesota.
He added: “Sentera’s scouting solutions allow us to quickly gather data across more acres and with greater detail, enabling us to customise our approach to each field. Coupled with the John Deere technologies we already leverage today, we can be more efficient and deliver even better outcomes for our customers.”
Sentera will continue to supply cameras directly to drone manufacturers for integration into their products, as well as sell to farmers, agronomists, ag retailers, and other users.
The John Deere Operations Center will continue to be open for other drone imagery providers for integration as well, ensuring customers and their advisers continue to have choices on the solutions that work best for their operation.
“John Deere provides us a great outcome and is exactly the right home for Sentera,” said Brian Wenngatz, CEO of Sentera. “They are the industry benchmark for innovation in precision agriculture, and they share our belief that the future of access to these technologies is built on trusted relationships, measurable insights and scalable platforms. Together, we’ll be able to support more farmers and help them unlock even more value.”