One rock ends your seeding season.
Rosengren Farms stopped guessing.
Colin Rosengren runs a grain operation out of Saskatchewan. He runs an 84-foot rock detection system — 9 AI depth cameras — to protect a seeder worth many times more. The system shipped May 2026. He liked the results so much he's now pursuing the Canadian dealer license.
The challenge
Saskatchewan grain operations run fast in the spring window. Seeders are expensive — a modern air drill represents a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar investment that has to run clean from first light to last. One rock hit in the wrong spot doesn't just damage a row unit — it takes the machine out of service during the window you can't miss.
Colin had done what every experienced producer does: walked fields, scouted for surface rocks, sent crews out before seeding. It's not that the method fails — it's that it doesn't catch everything, and the consequence of the one it misses is disproportionate to what the detection problem actually costs to solve.
The question wasn't whether rock detection was worth it. It was whether the technology was real and whether it would actually work on an 84-foot boom in Saskatchewan field conditions.
The solution
FarmDefender's rock detection system puts nine stereo depth cameras across the full 84-foot bar. Each camera runs an AI model in real time — not a blob-detector, not edge detection, but a trained neural network that classifies rocks and returns a confidence score, position, and depth estimate for every object above the detection threshold.
Detection starts at 6 cm — the size class that causes seeder damage. The system maps every detection in real time: GPS position, depth estimate, bounding box. At the end of a pass, the operator has a georeferenced map of every rock the boom crossed. Send a picker to those coordinates and you're done.
The system mounts to Colin's existing boom. Single PoE cable run to the cab. No proprietary terminal required. FarmIQ™ gets the detection log automatically — rock maps become field history that doesn't reset at season end.
Cheap insurance for a seeder worth many times more.
Colin runs the system — not because the risk wasn't manageable before, but because the cost of managing it with the old method (human scouting, repeat passes, hoping) was already significant, and the asymmetry was obvious once he looked at the numbers.
One seeder repair event — parts, labor, downtime during seeding — runs into the tens of thousands. A rock that hits a header at speed does more. The detection system pays for itself the first time it catches the rock that manual scouting missed.
The part that closed the deal: Colin is now pursuing the Canadian dealer and installer license. That's the level of confidence that comes from running the hardware yourself.
"The system paid for itself the moment I stopped sending a crew out to walk fields for two days before every seeding run. That time has real cost — and the cameras catch what the crew misses anyway."
What deployed
FD-84D rock detection
Nine stereo depth cameras across an 84-foot boom. Full coverage at operating speed. Every rock ≥6 cm detected, classified, and georeferenced before the seeder reaches it.
FarmIQ integration
Detection events log to FarmIQ automatically. Rock maps accumulate season over season — the field history that tells you where the rocks keep coming from and which zones need aggressive attention before seeding.
Dealer + installer path
Colin is pursuing the Canadian dealer license for FarmDefender — putting rock detection in reach for Saskatchewan operations without waiting for a Montana installation crew to cross the border.
How does your operation handle rocks?
If the answer involves crew time, repeat field walks, or hoping — we can give you a straight number on what detection costs versus what it saves on your equipment and your schedule.