Drones Are a Necessity for Some Farmers

Travis Couch has bought so deeply into his small, young, aerial drone spraying business that he sold the family dairy cows. But, 2024 was not a great summer for a start-up spraying business, and that was before Couch spent one sweltering Monday afternoon in late July utterly grounded.

The owner of, pilot for and funding behind Stone Valley Drones had spent part of his Sunday prepping to make sure his Rantizo-sourced DJI Agras T30 would be able to fly and spray everywhere he needed it to the following day.

Nevertheless, halfway through a fungicide job he'd taken up for an old friend in Butler County, Pennsylvania, he ran into trouble.

Most of Couch's short career as an aerial drone operator had been going well. He started the company a year prior, in 2023, to supplement the family's 100-cow dairy. His calendar filled almost immediately, as the sprayer drone offered a much-desired service in an area short on more traditional aerial applicators. But, sub-$4 corn has a way of knocking down producers' willingness to invest in their crop, and while the summer of 2024 was still busy enough, it was a rough lesson for a still-new company.

And, to compound the season's frustrations, it was a Monday afternoon, and Stone Valley Drones' only drone would not launch, barred from doing so by a digital geofence around a nearby airport. Couch had sought clearance the day before, again that afternoon and yet again after he was given permission to spray the field he needed to but not to lift off from the stubble next door, where he waited.

In a way, it summed up much of the rush of aerial drones in farming: swiftly maturing technology that's becoming critical to some farmers, tremendous potential that's in some cases barely being scratched and a mess of red tape and regulations that are slowly getting sorted out.

HIGH ABOVE

For many farmers, the use of aerial drones has gone from fantasy to novelty to, in certain cases, necessity, and it has happened fast.

"When we started, everyone thought this wasn't going to last, that it was a fad," says Ryan Schroeder, who in Iowa helped start Terraplex AG, a drone service and sales operation. "We see more farmers who were just watching decide to dip their toe in and get some custom work done, and that's translating into owning their own drone."

Terraplex was founded just four years ago in Odebolt, Iowa. Now, it has expanded to five locations, three more in Iowa and one in South Dakota, while establishing affiliate partnerships with dealers in five other states.

"As drones evolve, it will get to the point where every farmer will own one or have access to one," Schroeder says.

That line between "own one" and "access one" is shifting, too, from farmers to companies.

The applicator and drone pilot licenses required to operate and spray with the machines take time to obtain, and there's no shortage of expenses, from the cost of the drone itself (starting at roughly $30,000 and going way, way up) to the money needed to outfit a trailer or pickup to tend to the sprayer in the field.

"The biggest shift we're seeing is these agribusinesses starting up, and they're dedicated to drone spraying," says Arthur Erickson, CEO of Hylio, a Texas ag drone developer. "The early adopters were the farmers themselves, producers who were fed up with a lack of access to decent, reliable, on-time sprayers, and it made sense for them to have a drone. Now, this infrastructure is building up, and you have these middlemen."

There have been new entries into the industry, such as Terraplex, but longtime players in ag equipment have also pivoted. Apple Farm Service, based in Covington, Ohio, is a Case IH dealer that's been in business for more than 70 years. Last year, it birthed a new department and started servicing and selling Hylio drones.

It's proven to be a different kind of challenge.

"It's a large learning curve," company vice president Matt Apple says. "It's not like a tractor or a combine where you just turn the keys and go. These are very specialized machines. They're not toys, and the guys who treat them like toys don't last very long."

The company does offer training with a sale, and locals are catching on. Apple says sales in 2024 were four times that of 2023, helping bring aerial spraying drones alongside more traditional ag equipment as staples on (or over) the modern farm.

FLYING FORWARD

Just how capable drones will get, and how quickly, depends on who you ask and where they're located.

The drones themselves have been growing rapidly. Couch's DJI Agras T30 was introduced in the United States in 2021 and has now been replaced twice, with another model looming.

The top offering from Hylio now is the AG-272, with an 18-gallon spray tank and a promise of up to 50 acres an hour deploying 2 gallons per acre.

Guardian Ag, a Massachusetts-based drone developer, is readying its massive SC1 drone, which has a 20-gallon capacity, for sale.

Wilbur-Ellis partnered with Guardian in 2022 in a multimillion-dollar deal and plans to begin using the SC1 over fields in California's Salinas Valley this fall.

"We expect great things from it," says John Watson, unmanned aircraft systems product manager at Wilbur-Ellis. "It gives us a big advantage, not only in the capacity of the tank but in its ability to output it."

The Guardian drone won't come with batteries meant to be swapped with every pass like some of its competitors. Instead, it'll connect with a supercharger for a quick fill-up.

The automation of processes like recharging the battery and refilling the spray tanks is one of several key developments that could soon push the efficiency of aerial drones to a new level. Another is swarming, so that one operator can launch and maintain several machines at the same time, quickly increasing effectiveness and making a drone operator more competitive with traditional wheeled sprayers or airplane or helicopter applicators.

Especially in regard to swarming, there are many licensing hurdles to overcome, but companies are starting to surmount them with the Federal Aviation Administration.

At the same time, development is ongoing for aerial drones that could change the game in their own way. The Pyka Pelican is an autonomous airplane that's been extensively used in Central America and is making its way into the United States. Rotor, meanwhile, is a company focused on turning full-sized helicopters into autonomous drones. It boasts a 110-gallon capacity and a 240-acre-per-hour capability.

INTO THE WILD BLUE

Couch isn't eager to remotely pilot a whole helicopter. He was long a producer with his feet firmly in the dirt before he became a retailer offering farmers a service above it. He grew up just as his father and grandfather, working their Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, dairy. But, Couch had his eyes open for other opportunities.

After months of research, he decided that was aerial drone application. In Rantizo, he found a company to offer him support, from setting him up with the machine to helping line up the required tests and licenses. It was Rantizo he called on that hot Monday afternoon when the airport geofence was slowing things down.

In the summer of 2023, his first operating a drone, he sprayed herbicides, insecticides and fungicides, and spread cover crop seed. He even took one job spraying invasive weeds in a forest, an anxiety-inducing challenge that had his drone bobbing and weaving through tree trunks.

He sprayed so much that what he initially intended as a supplement enterprise to the dairy would instead overtake it. He sold the cows in the spring to put his whole focus on aerial spraying.

"I didn't have the help at home to run the dairy and do the drone spraying at the same time," he says. "It was time for a change anyway, and I decided to make the jump."

In western Pennsylvania, Couch found one of those agricultural niches often overlooked before aerial drones. Jeff Ansell, a Nutrien crop consultant and one of Couch's clients, says urban density and tight, tree-lined fields have kept airplane and helicopter applicators at bay, so late-season applications were never an option for the fields he managed.

"We've known for a long time the benefits of flying fungicides and nutritionals and insecticides over this crop late whenever it's in tassel," he says. "We haven't been able to do it until we got the drones."

Ansell recalls calling Couch to talk about a cow only to learn his old friend had taken up a new side job. Days later, Couch was in Ansell's fields.

"As a grower and a retailer, this is the future," he says.

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