John Deere has acquired GUSS Automation, a high-value crop autonomy company, after collaborating on a joint venture since 2022. GUSS stands for Global Unmanned Spray System.
GUSS, founded by Dave Crinklaw in 2018, manufactures autonomous sprayers in Kingsburg, California. These sprayers, supervised by a single operator, use GPS, LiDAR and proprietary software to navigate through orchards and vineyards to precisely spray the crops. A single operator can manage up to eight machines at once.
John Deere says more than 250 GUSS machines are deployed globally and have sprayed up to 2.6 million acres for more than 500,000 hours.
Julien Le Vely, director of production systems in high-value and small-acre crops at John Deere, says that while the company has its initial roots in almond orchards, GUSS has been deployed in pistachio, apple and citrus orchards as well as vineyards.
"It's an opportunity for us to grow further going forward, whether it's in North America or in Europe or in Australia or in Argentina," he says of the acquisition. "One of the things that the deal does is it allows us to provide access to our channel globally to GUSS and to distribute the product in an efficient way."
Le Vely says John Deere plans to expand GUSS into additional global markets, building on its presence in Europe, Australia and North America. He identifies fast-growing regions such as South America and Latin America as priorities for future expansion.
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