Drones As Field Scouts

Nutrien Ag Solutions is using a fleet of unmanned aircraft for routine aerial applications. Will Fellmeth, the company's chief drone pilot, explains how drone technology works and the benefits it brings to producers.

“Right now, we're in the back end of fungicide applications. So fungicide was huge. Just one particular pilot in Eastern Illinois did about 5000 acres of fungicide applications from about early, mid July to about recently now. But additionally, out in Southern California, UAS are being used to apply anything and everything out there, and especially crops, fungicides, insecticides, herbicides and specific uses are being used.”

In addition to applications, Fellmeth says that drones can also serve as field

scouts.

“We're also seeing UAS being utilized for remote sensing. So this is field scouting. This is generating maps about your field to generate, to pull information out of it. Particularly we're looking at things like maybe finding wet spots in your field. We're looking at crop health. We're getting yield estimates. We're generating topographic maps.”

Once again, will Fellmeth chief drone pilot with Nutrien Ag Solutions.