[AShyFig]

The advantage flying sprayers have over a tractor is loss. Driving a tractor through a field will crush a percentage of your crop, and a percentage of that crushed crop will never recover.

Depending on the field that percentage can be as high as 10. Depending on the crop, the value you gain by aerial application can be in the 10s of thousands of dollars.

[eschneider]

That's a solved problem with precision guided, self-steering tractors. They also remember where they planted crops so they won't roll over plants later.

There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in agtech, most of it is practical, too. But yeah, guidance add-ons to a farmer's existing equipment has a pretty good return on investment for the farmer.

[dbcurtis]

That’s an overly simplistic assertion. It depends on the crop, how it is planted, and maturity.

There is a soy bean pest that can invade crops on my family’s farm. If treatment is needed early, the cost effective solution is to drive a spray rig. Later in the season, that causes too much crop damage. So then it becomes a calculation of the loss due to pest versus cost of arial application.

In the end, it all comes down to cost per acre and the benefit needs to exceed that.

[Loughla]

How tight are your rows that a high-boy or low-boy can't fit between them? When I still farmed, We sprayed late season crops with one of the two of those, with spray control to the square foot. That and auto steer meant we damaged about 40 plants total going into the end rows and out.

[AShyFig]

This future is a lot closer than most people think, but is hardly a solved problem.

-posted from my self driving tractor.

[viraptor]

You're still not gaining much, right? You're just not losing what's already planted, but you could still plant more if you didn't have to drive in the first place - or do I misunderstand the precision driving?

[bguebert]

That might be for some crops, but some like wheat are planted too close together to drive anything between them without knocking some down.

[barbazoo]

By not having to drive a tractor through it regularly maybe crops can also be planted closer together? Although, there's still the harvesting at the end at which point you'd lose those gains again.

> Driving a tractor through a field will crush a percentage of your crop

Even if there are "tracks" to account for the tractor's wheels? Nothing would have been planted there in the first place?

[MegaDeKay]

I live in a rural area and there are huge grain fields all around me. At least for these kind of crops, the field is seeded 100%. There are no gaps for the tractor wheels. Having said that, you rarely see tractors pulling a sprayer in the first place anymore. Most crops around here are sprayed by purpose built sprayers that have tons of ground clearance, have relatively narrow tires, very wide booms, and are comparatively very light vs. a massive tractor. They can be built so light because they aren't used to pull heavy implements behind them. All they carry is the chemical, the spray booms, and the operator. Later in the season, it would be tough to pick out the path these things took through the field if you could at all. As for costs, the spraying is often done on contract so the farmers don't buy the sprayers in the first place: they pay for the service plus the chemicals.

For this kind of application, I think drones have a snowball's chance in hell of getting any kind of traction with farmers in the area. Their capacity is too small, their runtime is too short, the area they can cover per unit time is too poor, etc.

[zdp7]

You are taking a very narrow view of what a drone is. The MQ-9A Reaper drone has an almost 2 ton payload capacity and flight endurance of 27 hours. I can totally envision a purpose built drone that could mount a crop dusters spray rig. It just most likely wouldn't be an electric quadcopter.

[MegaDeKay]

Seriously? That is a completely different animal from the drone portrayed in the article. Anything in that league wouldn't be anywhere near cost effective vs. something like a conventional crop sprayer plane.

[zdp7]

I am serious that I can envision a drone that could be used for crop dusting. I personally wouldn't use a quad copter, but probably something more like a 20-30 foot flying wing powered by a small gas engine. My example of a predator drone was to illustrate that it is entirely possible to design a UAV that greatly exceeds the specs needed for crop dusting. I also think most people here are vastly underestimating what a Agricultural UAV is capable of. Take a look at this page https://store.tmotor.com/product/P80-v3-pin-kv100-p-type.htm... and some of their possible configurations.

[SR2Z]

I think just adding a gas engine to a quadcopter would give it enough endurance to make it useful. Obviously a crop duster is going to be fairly large to start with - it needs some space just to store the things it will spray.

[mrguyorama]

Lol I was going to say: None of the hundreds of square miles of crops where I grew up have this problem. Maybe corn and soybean fields omit the structure to attempt to get more yield? In which case, crushing some of it is still likely a positive yield compared to not planting ruts.

[AShyFig]

Crush becomes a problem for us in Canola and Lentils during desiccation; which is a chemical application at the end of the season right before havest. As the name implies, desiccation takes a crop which might have variations in "greenness"/maturity and kills it all down to a consistent state for harvest.

At this point in the crops life, the canopy is quite filled out, and a large portion of it is already dry. By driving through the feild at this time you knock the seed from the pod onto the ground, where it is impossible to harvest. Thus it is better to do desiccation from the air.

[tubetime]

these exist, they're called tramways but they are more common in europe.