Do Drones Pay for Themselves?

Tim Hammerich

News Reporter

Today, many farmers and ranchers have drones on their operations. They can be fun to fly around, and handy to get an aerial view of fields. But do they really pay for themselves, or are they just a cool toy to play with? Farmer Landon Friesen says he can point to very specific ways he has saved money by having a drone, and knowing how to use it.

Friesen… “If it's time to build shop or a building in your yard, and you can use DroneDeploy. It does the grid pattern. It flies your yard automatically. And then I can do surveys with it. So for example, few years ago, we were gonna put three-phase power into our yard. Hydro needed to send a survey guy. It was gonna cost, I think it was like $1,500, to come to our yard and pretty much push the flags in the ground and map how much wire they needed and all that stuff. So I thought, well, what if I can give you an exact map? And he says, well, that would save me coming out. So I flew the yard, did the grid, used the software, automatically measured the distance of the wire, where it's going to go. Printed the map off and sent it to them. And they accepted it. You know, there's $1,500 that I saved. So that drone is more than paid for itself a few times now, just in yard upkeep or updates and stuff. So it's more of a toy, but there has been points where it's paid for itself.”

Fresen says being able to accomplish tasks like that are very handy, especially in a rural area.