Hauling drones and trailers to customers in Washington state or elsewhere across the country is the norm for Apexx Drone Solutions in Montgomery, Ind.

“Our training guy, we actually sent him out there to the customer,” says Cody Garrison, head of sales for Apexx Drone Solutions. “He delivered the drones and the trailer, and he did the training on-site in Washington.”

This service is not just for out-of-state customers. The team at Apexx works to match growing local demand for drones, drone accessories and drone services.

Meeting demand

Apexx covers 50,000 to 80,000 acres across the U.S. each year with contracted chemical or cover crop applications, with most of that acreage falling in Indiana and Illinois. About 5,000 to 10,000 acres of that total, on average, is for cover crop seeding in southern Indiana.

That is a service where demand has slowly increased. So, Apexx has reserved cover crop-seeding services for close to home. Garrison shares that farmers typically associate drones with spraying, so the concept of using them to seed cover crops from the air is still new.

Fungicide applications are the most requested at Apexx. Its spraying service demand has exploded, Garrison says.

“Every day, it seems to get bigger,” Garrison adds. “I’ve got more people interested, more farmers who are wanting to buy a drone as supplement.”

Related:AI technology could improve tomorrow’s seed corn

That seems to be a model that has worked well for Apexx, especially in southern Indiana. While farmers keep using their ground-sprayer, they also purchase a drone to reach areas that are hard to cover with a sprayer or to have on hand in case of muddy conditions.

Big or small

This flexibility in how drones can be implemented makes them work with operations of all sizes. Garrison says that drone work is not reserved for a specific farm size. Popularity is growing for small patches of ground that are troublesome to reach with a ground-sprayer. However, Garrison adds that their drones have covered 200-acre fields.

“People don’t think drones can do those big, open fields,” Garrison says. He adds that most farmers cannot get past the idea that drones are reserved for small patches of ground. But Garrison shares that this year was a turning point for their company in proving to farmers that drones can match ground rig performance on that larger acreage.

It has been a slow process getting farmers to trust drones enough to test them in their operations, Garrison says. He has noticed, however, that people tend to stick with drones after trying them for a season. Further, those repeat clients typically double acreage covered with drones in the following season.

Related:How to pinpoint fungicide applications next season

“It’s one of those things where it’s new technology,” Garrison says. He adds that farmers are typically set in their ways with new technology, but like with GPS, that technology will later prove vital to the operation.

Not a replacement

One question still echoes in farmers’ minds: Will drones replace ground-sprayers?

“No,” Garrison says, adding that sprayers still have their spot in the chemical application space. He says it is hard to get farmers and applicators to be “gung-ho” about ditching what has worked for them to jump ship to something that is still so new.

But he does see drone work continuing to find a place on every farm. And Garrison predicts that will be literally every farm.

“I don’t know how many famers will actually own a drone in the next five years, but between farmers owning one or having us apply products on some land, I think it will be 100%,” Garrison says.