John Deere partners with GUSS to make the Global Unmanned Spray System, an autonomous sprayer for orchards and vineyards. The machine handles precision spraying with less labor and environmental impact, built specifically for high value crop growers in Australia.
GUS stands for Global Unmanned Spray System. It's a fully autonomous orchard and vineyard sprayer. So it goes through the fields with no driver on it, sprays the trees with the products that they need, so fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, types of chemicals like that. Also we have an herbicide version of the machine that takes care of the weeds in a row in the fields. So the whole concept is to have one person super supervising the vehicles from the safety of a ute or pickup truck, something like that, and monitoring anywhere from one to eight of these machines at a time. So very efficient, big solution for labor challenges where the lack of labor is an issue. And we're just very excited about bringing this machine to more parts of Australia and helping Australian growers with their labor problems. In addition to labor challenges, GUST is also a very big solution for precision agriculture. So being fully robotic, controlled by a computer, the precision that it sprays with is just phenomenal. So it goes to correct speeds at all times, sprays the correct amount of product and turns on and off when it's supposed to. Doesn't double spray a row on accident, doesn't miss a row. Just extremely precise. So better for the crops, better for the environment, and just an all around great machine that's going to really help growers with a lot of their challenges. Now we've been in partnership with GUS for just over a year and the partnership has been a fantastic example what two companies can accomplish when you come together in a very highly aligned and strategic manner. The focus that John Deere is putting on the high value crop market is second to none. It is there to stay. And with a company such as GUS being able to tackle a lot of solutions, resolve a lot of problems that exist for growers today in that high value crop space.
