One of the coolest parts of the 2024 Farm Progress Show is checking out the in-field demos. Earlier I had the chance to go to the Agri-Spray Drones tent where they were flying drones. Here’s how you can use drones to seed cover crops. CEO Taylor Moreland tells us more about it.

“So this over here, this is the cover crop, well, the "granular material", applicator. So on the bottom there, it's got a spinner disc. About this big in diameter, you can vary the speed of that, obviously, and vary the height the drone operates that. And then the top, the whole top opens up, so you can fill it with a seed tender, dump buckets or bags in there. It'll hold, about 100, 120 pounds in there.”

“So over-seeding cover crop, that's an application that, not a lot of guys are doing right now because timing is key on that. You got to, if you're putting out radishes or turnips or clover or whatever you're doing, small seeded cover crops, you gotta do it early. You got to do it before your crop comes out of the field and want to do that is from the air. and then you got to wait for a week where you've got rain, to get it established. And you've got to wait to where you've got, some defoliation starting to occur within the crops, so that when it does germinate, then you can get sunlight through the canopy.”

“If you're trying to coordinate that with a helicopter or airplane, it's very difficult. But if you've got a drone on the farm, you can do it yourself. And efficiency is very good with cover crop where you're putting out, you know, ten, 15 pounds per acre with small seeded cover crops, you can cover well, about ten acres per tank load, in about a ten minute time frame.That's going to be revolutionary, we'll look at cover crop over- seeding and especially with the carbon credits, that guys are looking at now too.” 

Watch the full version of this episode of Conservation Ag Update.