Ag drones challenge federal regulators

Jan 16, 2025

Dust swirled as the 83-pound drone launched from a clearing near a Nebraska cornfield. With its four propellers humming, Paige Browning used a handheld controller to move the drone across the field, spraying a mist of fungicide on crops below.

“You think in your head it’s going to be fun — cool job, right?” said Browning, a Nebraska rancher who started flying agricultural drones two years ago with her father and uncle. “But when you get into the nitty gritty and actually doing it, it’s a very dirty job.”

Browning is one of around 1,000 pilots authorized to fly agricultural drones in the U.S., according to a spokesperson with the Federal Aviation Administration. Around 85% of those pilots were approved last year.

Agricultural drones cost between $30,000 and $50,000 but are cheaper than traditional crop-dusting airplanes. The drones also spread chemicals and seeds more efficiently by getting closer to the ground, especially around hilly terrain, telephone poles and oddly shaped fields.

However, the agricultural drone industry is much more complex than traditional “backyard” drones flown by hobbyists. With a width sometimes exceeding 35 feet, the drones can cause significant damage in a crash.

Flight patterns must also be carefully monitored as the chemicals they spread can be toxic to farmworkers on the ground.

Federal regulators are struggling to keep up with the emerging technology and the flood of pilot applications, which topped 1,200 during the first six months of 2024, according to an Investigate Midwest analysis of October records.

But just as the agricultural drone industry has started to take off, a proposed federal ban last year on Chinese manufacturers threatened to ground much of the sector.

“We’ve been working really hard to educate various members of Congress in the House and Senate as well as in the USDA about the benefits of spray drones,” said Mariah Scott, CEO of Rantizo, an Iowa-based drone dealer. “These are really useful tools that are creating great jobs in rural communities. They’re helping farmers treat their acres more efficiently and more cost-effectively.”

Before getting a specific Agricultural Aircraft Operator Certificate, which allows a drone pilot to use chemicals, a person must first complete training and secure a basic drone license.

Click here to see more...

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators