Deere launches AI assistant named JD to guide farmers’ choices
AI tool helps farmers parse data collected by high-tech tractors
Farmers are getting some help sorting through the reams of data collected by their high-tech tractors: An AI assistant named JD built into Deere & Co.’s Operations Center mobile application.
The tool can help leverage data specific to growers’ fields, with information collected when crops are being planted, treated or harvested. That can help inform choices, for instance, on whether fields need more fertilizer or less.
“We think there’s hundreds of decisions that economically matter for a farmer throughout a season,” Deanna Kovar, worldwide president of agriculture and turf at Deere, said in an interview. “JD is now the researcher for the farmer — the data analyst — to go seek out those answers and do it in a much more efficient way.”
Historically, farmers may have waited until the end of the growing season to study how crops developed and what impacted yield. An AI assistant, powered in part by a large learning language model that Deere didn’t disclose, can start that process right from the tractor as it moves through the field.
As part of the rollout of the JD assistant, Deere also released its “farmer data commitment” that reiterated that growers control their own information, and that Deere never sells it. Some growers have become wary about sharing crop totals with the US Department of Agriculture as well as other entities amid fears it could be misused.
Farmers, stung by several years of tough economic times, have also been less willing to invest in the latest model machinery, which comes at a premium price even as it helps growers operate more efficiently. The JD assistant will be free for app users, and will become more broadly available later this year, the company said.
“This is a pivot-point opportunity for us in agriculture to take all of this data and really start to help farmers make sense of it,” Kovar added.
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