What Happens When a Drone Can See Every Weed in the Field?

Most in-crop spraying still works the same way it did decades ago: load the sprayer, cover the whole field, hope the chemical lands where it's needed. Dan McCann's estimate is that roughly 80 percent of it doesn't. It hits bare dirt or a plant that was never a threat. Precision AI's answer is computer vision built for the field: drones flying up to 70 km/h with sub-millimeter resolution, trained to tell a wild oat from a wheat plant at the 2-leaf stage. What a farm does with that data is where the real shift happens. What's Inside - Why traditional high-clearance spraying wastes an estimated 80 percent of applied chemical on bare dirt or non-target plants - How sub-millimeter computer vision tells weed species apart from crop at flight speeds up to 70 km/h - The two-part system: survey drones that build precision weed maps for ground sprayers with individual nozzle control, and spraying drones that spot-dose weeds directly from the air - Why drone spraying avoids soil compaction and can work wet fields that would get a ground rig stuck - The cost gap between $150,000 to $200,000 sprayer retrofits and a per-acre drone survey fee, and what that means for smaller operations - How an app built to catalog garage items led to a company solving crop protectionConnect with Growing the Future Website: growingthefuture.ca YouTube: Growing the Future Instagram: @growingthefuturepodcast LinkedIn: Growing the Future Register for the Convergence Conference at convergence.ag and stay updated by subscribing to the Growing the Future Podcast at growingthefuturepodcast.ca.