Will Drones Replace Crop Dusters?
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
What does the rise in drone spraying mean for traditional aerial applicators of agricultural chemicals? Well at least one company is embracing the technology. Lukas Koch is the chief technology officer at Heinen Brothers Agra Services in Kansas, and he sees plenty of opportunity for both approaches in the future.
Koch… “I definitely think we see autonomous crop protection as a really exciting opportunity for us as an industry. Mainly because it starts to unlock really good value down at the farmgate. It could really open the potential for spot spraying, which we've seen done in nice little trials and things like that. But what's missing is a really autonomous platform that can fly around and manage these on a day to day to day basis. And not have to worry about going out there and doing it manually yourself. And as there's some pretty exciting AI stuff going on out there. When we look at unit economics of spraying full fields or full pastures, a lot of folks wanna do it. And some of those applications are very expensive. So even if you could save half on chemical, that's a really big deal.”
Heinen Brothers have also launched Kelly Hills Unmanned Systems which is holding a grand opening on August 22nd for their FAA approved test site for autonomous aerial applications.
