Big news from Verdant Robotics this week as they announced the close of a $46.5 million series A funding round – one of the largest investments in ag robotics to date. Verdant Co-founder Curtis Garner says the funding will enable the company to scale its fleet, build more machines and cover more acres. Verdant’s robot can simultaneously weed, fertilize, and treat plants for pests and disease with its sub-millimeter accurate spraying technology.

In this episode we look at the top factors growers say are impacting their decisions to purchase equipment in 2023. In the Technology Corner, Noah Newman takes a closer look at Precision Planting’s new sprayer technology ReClaim. Also in this episode, Kubota’s 9 month U.S. sales break $5 billion and a preview of Ag Equipment Intelligence’s latest research report “Autonomous Farm equipment: U.S. Farm Adoption & Outlook.”

Precision Planting’s new sprayer technology ReClaim is officially available to buy in the U.S. and Canada. We first learned about the product about a year ago at the company’s annual winter conference. ReClaim is a boom recirculation system designed to make sure farmers get their boom fully primed with the right concentration of products without having to spray a drop of chemical on the ground, eliminating crop damage and hot spots at the edge of the field.

Precision Planting’s latest invention is a suite of tools for automating soil sampling and testing. This week the company announced the new tools for agronomists under the name Radicle Agronomics.

In this episode of On the Record, we take a closer look on AGCO’s unfinished inventory, which is the highest it’s been in 2 years. In the technology corner, we take a look at Precision Planting's new tools for automating soil sampling. Also in this episode, the results of a Farm Equipment poll on OEM new equipment lead times and an update on the UAW-CNH strike.