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OWATONNA, Minnesota (WCCO) — Over the past several years there have been a number of advancements in farm technology. Spray drones, in particular, have taken off.
It’s Tyler Larson’s first year running a spray drone. On Thursday morning, he was applying fungicide to a soybean field near Owatonna, Minnesota.
“If you would have asked me when I was 16 that we would have drones in the air spraying crops, I wouldn’t even know what to say,” said Larson, of Larson Drone Spraying.
It’s technology that’s taking flight in southern Minnesota.
Larson first maps a farm field using overhead imaging. The green in his drone program shows him what’s been sprayed, the yellow shows what’s left to spray, and the red points out the boundaries and obstacles his DJI-240 drone needs to avoid.
“I just tell it that that’s an obstacle, and that’s an obstacle, and that over there is an obstacle and it just goes around it,” said Larson.
And it’s mostly hands-off. The drone launches from his repurposed trailer that also provides shade. It sprays 25-foot swaths and needs to return about every 5 or 6 minutes for a new battery.
On nice, flat land, Larson can spray up to 250 acres a day. But weather plays a big role in how much he can get done.
He says plane applications from the sky and spray rigs from the ground are effective, but he believes drones have one big advantage.
“A ground rig, they do an excellent job. But you kind of do run down some of your crop. For this, you don’t have any crop rundown you know,” said Larson.
Larson said he can also get his drone in and out of tough spots much easier.
“I think it’s the way of the future. For taller crops we’re going to be doing more and more aerial. There are going to be some ground rigs, but I think it’s going to be more and more,” said Larson.
Larson said it costs about $13 an acre to fly his spray drone.
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