Wallaces Farmer

From helping the next generation return to the farm to efficiently managing acres regardless of soil conditions, spray drones are revolutionizing agriculture.

3 Min Read
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Submitted by Agri Spray Drones

Empowering Individuals, Empowering Rural America

At the intersection of rural communities, agriculture, and technology, spray drones are making their mark on the countryside, literally. The technology is paving the way back to the farm for the next generation and creating a revenue stream for young agricultural entrepreneurs.

“Our reason for purchasing a spray drone was timing more than anything,” says Trey Neill of he and his wife’s decision to purchase a spray drone and launch Prairie Queen Agridrone Solutions in the spring of 2022. “We had watched the market the last couple of years and the technology had progressed to the point that we thought drones were going to be a big deal in agriculture.”

Neill says that coupled with the seed business he and his wife operate, spray drones were a logical step in being able to better serve their customers – a conclusion, Agri Spray Drones founder and owner, Taylor Moreland, agrees with.

As a seed dealer, himself, Moreland saw the struggles his customers were faced with during the growing season, especially during the critical, albeit short, fungicide and insecticide application windows.

“Every year I saw the weather challenges; you can’t get in the field with a sprayer rig when it’s wet and then the demand for planes bottlenecks. With fungicide and insecticide applications, there’s very little time between finding a problem and losing yield,” he says.

Moreland says that in his central Missouri region, common aerial application fees are around $12 per acre; on 1,000 acres, that’s a $12,000 investment. A sprayer drone can cover the same acres in a week’s time.

“The cost of operation for a spray drone is $2 per acre, including your time. That’s $10,000 in a week that you can put towards the cost of the drone,” Moreland says, “Think about having fungicide applied timelier, only on the areas that need it so you’re saving chemical, as well. Spray drones are money in a farmer’s pocket whether they are talking about application cost, product costs, or the advantages in yield potential that come from timely application.”

While timely crop spray applications take priority in many drone purchase decisions, pasture management and cover crop spreading are also opportunities for sprayer drone owners to find value both on and off their own acres. And regardless of what the drone is being used for, all can agree that the reduction in compaction is a win-win for the soil and the crop.

“More customers like the fact that we’re not making tracks. We had a customer with cutworms and there was literally water standing in the corn field. We waited a day for the water to recede from the plants, you still couldn’t walk out in it, and then we used the drone to spray those cutworms that were doing damage every hour,” Neill says, adding that the situation was an eye-opening experience on the value of a drone for all involved.

With the introduction of the Agras T30 this year and continued software improvement, it’s clear that drones in agriculture are here to stay, finding their place in a farmer’s toolbox of management resources.  

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