Sask. farmers use drones to hydrate and manage crops

WATCH: Farmers in Saskatchewan are using drones to manage their crops more efficiently, by identifying plant health.

Some farmers in Saskatchewan are using drones to manage their crops more efficiently, by identifying crop plant health.

Flying 10 to 12 feet above the crop canopy, farmers in the province see the DJI AGRAS model as a game changer.

“We’re a pretty small family farm,” said Brandon Reiman, who runs a family farm with his father in Avonlea. “It would be nice to just be able to stay ahead of the curve a little bit. Normally, we would be driving around with ATVs, picking up random debris and other things. Now we can just fly ahead real quick and there’s less soil compaction.”

Covering about 40 acres an hour, the AGRAS model weighs 80 pounds while holding up to 70 pounds of water or granular fertilizer. The spray can help prevent more soil compaction, creating better access for crops to grow.

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“This would be great for a smaller farm person to be able to cover the acres that they need, whether it’s for nutritional needs or they could be spreading seed,” said Lane Hodnefield, who is a retail agronomist at Volley Aerobotics.

“It might be an application that they would just go without because maybe they couldn’t afford the bill of the spray plane, where if they have something like this, they’re allowed to make those aerial applications,” he added.

The DJI AGRAS T50 model can also be paired as a secondary “mapping” drone, along with the Mavic. The Agras can identify crops through thermal vision, where the model will inform the Mavic on which area of crops may need certain levels of spray.

“It also has plant health imagery, so you can make a variable rate or variable rate spray maps with it. You can map your fields out to create borders,” Hodnefield explained.

Volley Aerobotics hopes to see drones used for even more applications in the future, like spreading fungicides and desiccants.

Although, that would require a change in federal legislation to align Canadian laws with practices.