John Deere has selected seven companies for its 2022 Startup Collaborator program.

“The start-up collaborator shows that part of our investment in technology is establishing a mechanism to help external ideas and knowledge collide with ours,” said Julian Sanchez, director, emerging technology for John Deere in a statement. “Agriculture is a domain ripe for technology pioneering, and the start-up collaborator program is a way to travel that journey together with others.” 

Deere launched the program in 2019 to enhance and deepen its interaction with start-ups whose innovations could add value for producers. The year-long program also enables a startup to test its technology with Deere customers and dealers without a formal business relationship.

“The expansion of this year’s collaborator program provides an opportunity for John Deere to work with this globally diverse group across a broad area of technology spaces while continuing to unlock value for our customers across multiple production systems,” says Michele Kaiser, business development manager for John Deere.

The following companies have been selected to participate:

Burro Robotics. This collaborative robotic platform helps people work more productively today while building the base for more expansive autonomy where it is needed most in the future.

Crop.Zone. The Crop.Zone process combines non-toxic conductive liquids (Hybrid Herbicide clone) and the application of low-voltage electricity to create an effective solution to combat weeds and manage preharvest desiccation. 

Four Growers. A company developing harvesting robots for greenhouses, starting with the harvesting of tomatoes.

SeeDevice. A company working to provide enhanced CMOS SWIR image sensing capabilities and performance, using quantum-based photodetector technology for smart devices in automotive, biomedical, and machine vision applications.

Ucropit. This start-up has created a free digital platform that brings together farmers and companies to create, aggregate, and share a crypto-confidential crop story with verified sustainability traceability.

ViewAR. With more than 10-years’ experience, this start-up is creating augmented reality (AR) business solutions, which address many customer pain points and use cases, like indoor navigation and AR for service. The technology also allows a business to easily create its own high-quality AR apps and start its augmented reality journey.

Yard Stick. This company is developing low-cost, instant, in situ soil carbon measurement technologies to enable gigaton/year carbon removal via agriculture.