Spray drones

Timing is critical on the farm and I’m guessing not many of you have your own airplanes or helicopters for spraying the crops the day it’s needed. The latest application technique is with sprayer drones, and you can do it yourself.

Taylor Moreland is the owner of Agri Spray Drones in Missouri. He says their drones will spray fungicide, spread cover crop seed, and help manage natural resources in a wide variety of settings that might be difficult to spray otherwise.

"Specialty crops is big, orchards, vineyards, potato farms. Mountainous terrain and forestry, these things have a third dimension to them," says Moreland. "So, when you look at mountainous areas where you need some type of brush control, this is a great platform to do so. Forestry work, like for conservation departments, seems to be pretty high on the list, and then wetland management. A lot of guys in our area have irrigation lakes and they get taken over by water lilies, so we control on wetland areas."

Depending on the model, the drones are large enough to carry tanks ranging from 3 to 8 gallons and will hold up to 70 pounds of granular product or cover crop seed. 

You can fly it as high as you need it to.

"You can set it anywhere from five feet over the crop canopy all the way up to 50 feet over the crop canopy. Typically, we’re right around 10 feet over crop canopy, flying at 15 mph. That creates a vortex behind the props which spreads out the product to about a 28-to-29-foot swath. Efficiency, at a two-gallon rate, two gallons per acre is typically what we do," he says. "You’re looking max efficiency of around 35 acres-to-the-hour per one machine."

The price of a full drone set up is just under $35,000.