It’s always amazing to see who stops by the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network tent at the Iowa State Fair. One of them is Paul Merdy, a high schooler from the Conrad area where he and a friend started Merst Precision Application, a drone custom spraying and application business.
“So, with the T-40s that we’re using now we can get about a 32-foot swath,” Merdy said. “They hold about 10 gallons, so at two gallons of the acre we can spray up to five acres per fill. We have chemical mixed and when the drone lands empty, we put a put a pump nozzle in the drone, and while it fills up we swap the battery and then it takes back off, so the programming is all automatic. It takes off, flies a route and then it comes back once it’s empty or the battery is low enough.”
Merdy said the latest charging technology can recharge those batteries in about seven minutes to increase efficiency, and they’ve been growing nicely.
“It has gone pretty well- we sprayed around 4500 acres this year plus about 800 acres of cover crop seeding as well,” Merdy said. “We did a little bit of mapping this year also, so basically the drone can just take high quality imagery of your fields and then we can upload that to your precision software and/or use it for ourselves too. If you had a new building added and we need to know where the boundary is on the field, for example, we can do that too.”
Merdy added that he believes the uses for drones in agriculture will only continue to expand.
