Drone Spraying is Ready for Takeoff

Drone Spraying is Ready for Takeoff

Tim Hammerich
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
It’s time for your Farm of the Future Report. I’m Tim Hammerich.

Over the years, technology for spraying fields has grown larger and more efficient. So it may seem far-fetched to imagine a future where we actually spray fields using drones. Well, that’s actually happening today. Drone-spraying company Rantizo flies three autonomous drones sprayers in a field at once and with an automated mix and fill system, can compete with the pace of traditional tractor sprayers. The tanks on these drones are small, but Ranitzo CEO Micheal Ott says that’s actually an advantage.

Ott… “When you've got a sprayer, you're basically spraying one thing through the whole field. The whole thing with Roundup, we're going to the whole thing where this insecticide, or whatever it is. We (Rantizo) can put insecticide there. We can put herbicide there. We can put nutrients here. So we can really modulate what you will put in the field with those smaller loads.”

Ott says other advantages include the ability to spray muddy fields, and to get applications through the canopy because the blades will move the plant around while spraying. Also, this opens the door for other types of applications.

Ott… “We're doing cover crop seeds -which we did a ton at the end of last year. We've done granular fertilizers. Beneficial insects we can spray. And then exciting announcement that we've got: we've applied pollen to corn from a drone. And I believe we were the only people ever to successfully pollinate corn from a drone.”

This all fits within Rantizo’s company motto: fly and apply.

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