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Are drones a useful tool for farming operations?

A crop protection specialist says spray drones can play an important role on today’s farms.

WinField United’s Tyler Steinkamp tells Brownfield, “Drones, especially as we continue to develop this technology, they just keep getting better and better.”

He says growers can use them for a variety of crop protection applications.

“Any pesticide that is currently registered for aerial application can be used,” Steinkamp said. “Now that doesn’t mean it should. There are some you want to be cautious of, but realistically, anything that on the label allows aerial application you are good to go through a drone.”

Steinkamp says drones are helping advance precision agriculture by improving application accuracy.

“You can be as precise as you want with a drone,” he said. “The other thing this opens up to is if you really want to test on your farm whether these inputs are working or not, it gives us a nice opportunity to do that. It’s harder with aerial application to do test blocks, but this makes an interesting opportunity for us.”

He says today’s drones are getting larger and are able to cover more area, but future models will likely offer even more efficiency.