This acquisition will integrate aerial field scouting
John Deere has acquired Sentera, an imagery solutions provider, to integrateaerial field scouting.
Sentera develops advanced sensors, hardware, and applications specifically ag functions that are compatible with multiple drone platforms.
When working together, Sentera’s technologies provide accurate scouting information to the grower.
They “capture very high-resolution imagery of every square meter of that field,” Eric Taipale, Sentera’s founder and chief technology officer, told Farms.com. “We have some software tools that then look at that imagery and find where the weeds are and of course, we know where each one of those images was taken.”
The sensors can also identify other management data, like emergence patterns, biomass development, signs of disease, and other stressors.
And when it comes to product applications, farmers can use the collected data with Sentera’s SMARTSCRIPTa product that provides a prescription for targeted spraying..
The system can provide a customized product prescription for a producer.
“But then we need to engage an agronomist or ag retailer for the specific recommendation of what to spray,” said Joseph Liefer, John Deere’s global technology marketing lead. “We don’t do a recommendation of what to put in the tank, but (when) armed with the information of what’s actually in the field, a farmers trusted advisor can make that decision.”
Deere and Sentera have been working together for years before the acquisition.
The two companies have had an application programming interface (API) relationship in place for nine years between John Deere Operations Center and FieldAgent, Sentera’s data platform providing farmers access to agronomic data.
A farmer can transfer field boundaries to FieldAgent, then use that to plan flight routes.
Then a farmer can transfer that data back to Operations Center. Sentera now plans to enhance the API integration with more data layers and analytics insights available within Operations Center.
“Our equipment might cover a field four or five times.We are capturing data at each of those passes, however we know that it’s not enough to understand the complete picture throughout the entire growing cycle,” Liefer said. “That’s why we’re so excited about the complementary nature of what Sentera is bringing and what it will allow us to do inside of John Deere Operations Center.”