How Drone Applications Can Fit Into Ag Retail
Ag Partners Cooperative in Kansas is thinking about the big picture with technology advances and heading to the field with a smaller sized application technology.
Rantizo CEO Michael Ott and Ethan Noll who heads up the digital ag efforts at Ag Partners, joined The Scoop podcast recently to share more about how drone applications are a fit for ag retailers.
This season will be the first application season for Noll, who first read about Rantizo in Farm Journal and had been watching the technology.
“This is another opportunity for us to get out there on their fields and service the customer,” Noll says. “We're located in northeastern Kansas and we have a diverse geography we have hills and then we've got some of the river bottoms–so it's pretty diverse. We go from wheat ground to 250 bushel corn.”
As Ott explains, Noll and his team have joined as applicators part of the Rantizo network that now expands to 18 states.
“What our contractors like is that we have a turnkey package,” Ott says. “Rantizo provides a turnkey solution, meaning it’s drones, hardware, software, training, support, insurance, permitting, a trailer–you name it, we've got everything that you need to be up safely and legally spraying.”
So far about 50% of the acres applied with Rantizo are for fungicide applications, says Ott, and the second most common application would be in smaller-scale trial plots, where the drones size is advantageous. In addition to spray applications, the Rantizo system can broadcast spread cover crop seed and fertilizer.
Ott says drone applications have the advantages of applying even in wet field conditions, being able to apply in otherwise difficult to reach fields for aerial application (hills, trees, etc), and examples where a whole field doesn’t need application—just zones of a field.
Last year, Rantizo was the first drone application company to receive the necessary waivers for swarming capability which expanded their productivity to up to 40 acres/hour.
Noll has seen the trend for more technology used in scouting and application. He says as a retailer dedicated to service, this type of technology fits into their approach of digital ag which includes precision scouting and variable rate application.
You can hear the full interview with Noll and Ott in this episode of The Scoop podcast:
