Caleb O’Neal is spending his Saturday at the Montgomery County fairgrounds teaching about a dozen people how to operate and pilot drones. But they’re not hobbyists, they’re farmers.
“This is not a brand new industry, but it's definitely blooming with modern technologies and just the availability to the everyday producer to get their hands on some of this equipment,” said O’Neal, an MU Extension field specialist.
For years now, farming has become increasingly tech-savvy, and now the next frontier for agriculture tools could be in the sky.
Among the participants in O’Neal’s drone school are farmers, college students and rural Missouri residents interested in working in agriculture.
Drones are among a suite of tools used in what’s known as precision agriculture — a type of farming that uses technology to more precisely plant crops and treat them for pests and weeds — ultimately using fewer environmentally harmful chemicals and saving farmers money.
“When we can reduce input costs, we're also reducing environmental impact. We're making ourselves more sustainable,” said Rusty Lee, MU Extension agronomy field specialist and O’Neal’s co-teacher at drone school.
Lee said there’s been exponential growth in the use of agricultural drones in the last five years, in part because they enable farmers to be a bit more nimble. He started deploying drones on his own farm more than a decade ago.
Now, MU Extension educators are traveling the state to get farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs up to speed on the best practices, regulations and safety measures for piloting drones. Trainers have hosted about half a dozen “drone schools” this year.
“As the technology progressed, the university, we started embracing in Extension the need to provide education for this technology, and so it just grew from that,” he said. “It's really taken off.”
Drones are relatively new as a piece of agriculture equipment — and a lot different than the tools farmers are accustomed to using, but Lee is confident the demand will continue to grow. He said as an industry, farming has always been advancing and adopting the latest methods.
“You don't last in the farming business without being able to evolve and incorporate and utilize new technology,” he said.
An opportunity for agriculture entrepreneurs
Drones can go places tractors, trucks and most large farm equipment can’t — places where soil is wet, corn is tall or terrain is rocky.
A ground rig sprayer that does the same job as a drone runs the risk of compacting a field’s soil and needs to be deployed within a short window before crops are too tall to drive over.
Gurbir Singh, a University of Missouri assistant professor in the Division of Plant Sciences and Technology, has been working in precision agriculture for about seven years. He said farm fields aren’t always flat, uniform acreage – and productivity can vary with the landscape. A certain section may grow really strong crops with high yields while another section of the same field produces poorly. Those are the areas farmers might want to replant or treat with fertilizer or pesticides.
“Just (as) a doctor prescribes a recommendation for a patient, we can prescribe recommendations for those individual management zones,” Singh said.
Farmers can fly small imaging drones over fields to scout crops, capturing a bird’s-eye view of how fields are doing.
Then, a significantly larger utility drone — affixed with a 12 to 15 gallon liquid holding tank — can apply herbicide, pesticide or fertilizer to just the areas that need it.
“With these drones as a new technology, we are able to target those precision zones or management zones very, very easily,” Singh said. “I don't have to drive in and compact my soil. Now I can fly.”
The job of fertilizing crops or treating fields with herbicides or pesticides has traditionally been done by crop dusters that broadcast their spray across entire fields as they fly over.
But crop dusting requires a pilot and a plane. In 2018, Taylor Moreland identified a supply and demand problem for those services.
“The demand for application was growing, the supply of pilots who could fly a plane and do that was not growing. So, there were many farmers who wanted the application service done (and) could not get it,” Moreland said.
But Moreland knew how to fly a drone and how to treat a crop. He grew up on a farm in western Missouri, studied agriculture through college and was a seed salesman before starting his own business, Agri-Spray Drones in Boonville.
“The people at the time that were selling these drones, they knew drones. They did not know agriculture,” Moreland said. “They didn't know farmers either.”
Farmers hired Moreland to use his two drones to treat crops for pests and disease, covering about 100 to 160 acres a day.
“I quickly learned that this was easy enough that I could teach somebody else how to do this,” he said. “I couldn't cover as many acres (as) needed to be covered with my two drones. And so I thought, well, maybe we can sell these to farmers. We can train them, get them licensing.”
Moreland started selling drones directly to farmers and others interested in starting their own custom application career.
Now, drone sales and technical support is the majority of Moreland’s business. Over six months in 2024, Moreland’s tech team took 20,000 calls, answered 47,000 texts and repaired more than 250 drones.
Agri-Spray Drones also hosts field days to provide training for farmers and future ag drone pilots. Moreland said his staff is often fielding questions about licensing and regulations, along with troubleshooting technical issues farmers and pilots may encounter.
“Farmers need their equipment to work now. Right now, today. Not tomorrow, not this weekend,” he said. “We only have so much time to get that seed in the ground and up and harvested.”
Moreland isn’t competitive. Due to the demand for agriculture drone services, he welcomes others to join the industry. He’s seen how learning to use a drone can diversify a farm family's income in an industry with tight margins — affording younger generations a chance to return to the farm and keep the business going.
“They would not have that opportunity if it wouldn't have been for them starting a drone business or getting a drone and saving the farm money,” he said.
A tool for sustainability
Cover crops are plants that grow from fall to spring and can support sustainable or regenerative farming on a number of fronts: living roots in the ground holds soil in place and reduces erosion. Additionally, the off-season vegetation supports water quality and boosts soil health.
But for cover crops to successfully take root, they need to be planted around the same time a farmer’s main crop, such as wheat, corn or soybeans, is being harvested.
“We harvest corn in September and by the time we take out the corn crop, it's already October, November … the growing period for cover crops is gone,” said Gurbir Singh, MU professor and Extension specialist in soil agroecology and landscape management.
Each fall, the timing overlap of harvest season and when cover crops need to be planted creates a logistical challenge for farmers looking to advance conservation practices in their fields.
Farmers generally don’t want to plow under their corn with a heavy tractor in order to plant a cover crop. But a utility drone equipped with a tank full of seed can do the job.
“We can actually fly a drone and overseed the cover crops into the standing corn or (soy)beans,” Singh said.
A whirring wheel affixed to an opening in the bottom of the drone’s tank can toss seeds across a radius up to 33 feet.
Farmers and researchers are finding utility drones can also be used to re-seed sections of pasture for grazing livestock — another method of regenerative agriculture.
“I think we're still trying to fully understand — or better understand — what role drones play, especially in sustainable agriculture,” said José Franco, director of research for the Savanna Institute, an organization that works with farmers and aims to increase diverse, perennial agroecosystems in the Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi watersheds.
“Generally, the sustainable ag community and the precision ag community have been very separate, historically,” Franco said. “And at least from my perspective, there are some overlaps.”
Savanna Institute researchers are using imaging drones to fly over forests and orchards to estimate yields. They’re using drone photos and data to create 3D models of trees and shrubs so researchers can analyze the amount of biomass they contain.
As climate change continues to threaten many elements of society, some look to offset emissions through carbon markets — where farmers or landowners receive a payment for planting carbon-capturing trees and vegetation. Franco said drones could be essential in designing those markets.
“Being able to tie the measurements with ecosystem service incentives is really key,” he said. “We need to be able to measure those metrics more readily, and so we're hoping that drone imagery will be a key part in unlocking some of that.”
Precision agriculture starts with data gathering. The Savanna Institute is also using drone images to assess how effective conservation practices like wind breaks are at protecting adjacent crops in extreme weather.
MU Extension drone trainer O’Neal said he didn’t anticipate his job as a plant scientist would also entail teaching farmers to pilot drones.
“A year ago, my experience with drones was probably fairly similar to most,” he said. “Christmas time, the remote control helicopter or something like that was always the favorite gift.”
But as he’s seen the variety of ways to use drones on a farm — scouting, seeding, fertilizing — he’s confident the technology is more than a toy and he expects it will play a large role in farming’s future.
“Drones are probably going to be synonymous with farming in 5 to 10 years,” O’Neal said.
If demand for drones continues to grow, it could help this new type of precision agriculture take flight.
