ST. PAUL – On April 4, some new technology was on display in St. Paul, and local agricultural producers had the chance to learn about the benefits of using drones on their farms.
Green Aero Tech hosted the demonstration along with St. Paul-based farm implement dealer Caouette & Sons. Spray drone technology is new in Saskatchewan and Western Canada, says David Koop, Chief Operations Officer of Green Aero Tech.
Advantages of using spray drones include spraying fence lines. Sometimes, spraying can be difficult due to rough and tight terrain, says Koop.
“Sometimes you have really high heavy slopes to deal with, which a drone can do all those things really nicely,” he explains.
Also, farmers with smaller areas to farm may find it more cost effective to also use drones by using them as their primary sprayer. On the other hand, big farmers may be able to utilize drones as a supplement for their primary sprayer.
Koop says spray drones are not in a place yet where it is going to completely replace what farmers in Western Canada are currently using. But, it is at a place where drones can be used to tackle some challenging locations that farmers may come across.
“Anything where you have a field that's a weird shape, or where you have telephone poles and need to turn around, or if you have some terrain where your booms ended up really high in the air… that's where a spray drone can really come in and do a good really good job and kind of take care of some of those awkward places,” says Koop.
One situation where farmers have seen a big benefit using drones, according to Koop, is when the farming season is late in the year – farmers often use high clearance sprayer to spray fungicide. This can crush crops, resulting to as high as a five per cent loss of crop.
Since drones are aerial, they don’t crush the crop.
Koop says research and development of drones for farming is continuous. At some point, Koop believes there will be more autonomous functions, and probably even swarm functions too. This means that in the near future, multiple drones may be able to operate at the same time – fill themselves up with liquid and batteries, for example – and continue working.
“At that point, we are going to be looking at replacing high clearance sprays, in my opinion,” says Koop. “And I think that technology is going to be here in several years.”
Cost Benefit
Another advantage of drone technology, according to Koop, is the price. For a new high clearance spray, it could cost between $800,000 to $1.3 million.
Sprayer drones cost under $40,000 for a unit, which can spray about a third or a quarter of the output as a high clearance sprayer. So, Koop says that even with four drones, it could still be cheaper.
Parts and service are also easy to take care of.
Andrew Morin, sales at Caouette & Sons, says the local company began selling drones from Green Aero Tech in September 2023.
“Technology is increasingly gotten faster and better… drones being the main one because [farmers] can scout, crop check, check their cattle when calving,” in addition to spraying, says Morin, listing the many ways drones are being used in agriculture.
Morin explained the spray drones are multi-function as well with their built-in software, such as a mapping capability.
Drones have about 10,000 hours of life cycle.
Local farmer Corey Wozniak says that after seeing the demonstrations, he would prefer to stick with his ground rig, but he does see the advantages of drone technology.
“Drone sprayers are ideal for smaller applications like spraying fence lines or smaller quarters of farm land,” says Wozniak, but he does not see much benefit just yet when it comes to bigger quarters of lands.
“But in my honest opinion, it’s pretty slick,” he says, acknowledging that there is already a market for the technology. “I’m sure in the future, a lot of guys will be using it.”
