It was ideal conditions on September 20 for drones to air-seed oats into a field of soybeans during Fall Demo Day at the Huronview Demonstration Farm outside of clinton. But the great weather also meant many farmers were harvesting their soybeans and missed the action.
    “You have to pick a day and hope for the best,” said Wim Feddes, president of the Huron Soil and Crop Association which sponsored the event with the Ausable Bayfield Conservation Authority.  Ag Business and Crop Inc. of Palmerston and Drone Spray Canada based in Blenheim demonstrated their two different drone spreaders.
    “We’re going to be spreading oats into the stands at a rate of 50 pounds per acre,” said Rick Koostra, farm manager for the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA) of the demonstration farm. “We want to try this because so many farmers have only two rotations -- corn and beans. Sometimes they plant wheat but if it's too wet, or too late, or too little money, then it’s just basically the two. So we want to bring oats in as a cover crop to create a three-crop rotation.”
    The soybean field had been green just two weeks ago but two weeks of hot, sunny weather had turned it yellow and with rain on the forecast, Koostra said the conditions were ideal to air seed the field.
    Jake Monroe, an OMAFRA advisor on the project said he’s seeing increased interest from farmers on planting oats and advised that cereal rye is another good option to plant this time of year.
   Also on hand was Mike Verhoog, a custom drone operator from Staffa who operates Sutan Family Farms. “I do as much custom work as possible because it's like playing video games all day long!” He uses a DJI T40 but he doesn’t have permission to fly the drone at local events. There are a lot of rules surrounding aircraft, he said.
   While preliminary discussions were going on, the XAG P100 Pro drone from Ag Business and Crop was being controlled by Lucas Weber, son of owner Felix Weber, to create a boundary map. Drone software then calculated the passes needed to seed the field. The XAG can carry up to 110 pounds with a spread rate of 330 pounds per minute. When switched to a liquid tank, it can hold 13.5 gallons with a dual pump flow rate of six gallons per minute. All told, it can spray 50-70 acres per hour.
    “I can do 400 acres in a day with just one drone,” said Lucas.
    Lucas, as the sales, service and demonstration guy for Ag Business and Crop said the idea behind XAG is reliability. Made of aluminum composite, he says farmers can have a spare arm in their truck and if an arm needs replacing, they can easily do it themselves. Plus, the software is all plug and play and the unit can be run by both the controller and a cell phone. Costs for this unit are in the range of $43,000.
    Lucas admitted XAG has some catching up to do with DJI, which is popular in the agriculture industry. “They have the market share but we think we have the Cadillac of spray drones.”
    Brian Van Steelandt of Blyth was operating the DJI T50 from Drone Spray Canada and said the drone is very easy to use and has cheaper parts than other drone models. Having always worked in the agricultural  industry, Brian was keen to work with this new technology and how it can be beneficial to farmers, especially during wet seasons. 
    “You can do more stuff with a drone than a ground machine because it’s not running over standing crops,” he said. “I can also play the green card because drones are run by batteries (changed by small generators) that use less energy than a 200 horsepower engine on a sprayer.”
    It’s not yet legal for drones to spray pesticides or fungicides but Brian expects it will be legal to spread fungicides by 2026. Currently, most of his business is spraying foliar fertilizer and cover crops. ‘It’s been a great two years because it’s been wet,” he said. Drone Spray Canada also sells the machines so they can train farmers themselves on how to operate the machines. Costs for DJI drones are in the $38,000 range. 
    The limitations of any drones are battery power. Batteries can die out within 10 minutes with a full load but last longer with an empty load. As the drone returns for reloading, new batteries are popped in. Brian said they always have a generator in the field to recharge the batteries, a process which can take as little as 14 minutes.
    There was also discussion about wind and how it affects coverage. Brian says he will spread cover crops in winds up to 30 kilometre per hour with very little issue. It’s not by choice, but sometimes wind speeds vary over large fields. On windy days, flying slower helps push the seed into the crop.
    It was hard to see the seed dispersal from the drones over the soybean field so each drone took a pass over the laneway to show the spread. It was surprising how much wind was generated from the rotating arms even standing safely from a distance.
    Also at Demo Day was Nicole Menheere, a knowledge mobilization specialist with OSCIA who had soil from her grandfather’s farm in one of three test tubes designed to show the impact of tilled versus no-till soil and water quality. In just a half hour, the soil from the conventional tillage field was collecting on the bottom and the water was cloudy. Soil from the no-till field, with its stable soil aggregates, had only traces of soil on the bottom and the water was clear.
    “When soil has poor aggregate stability, the soil leaches out into ditches and water sources and reduces water quality,” said Nicole.
    Also on view at the event was a modified Fendt Rogator spray which was applying cover crops in a back field at the Huronview site. ◊