One manufacturer I spoke with at the Farm Progress Show said it’s been a challenging economic year for most in the ag equipment space, but he pointed to the drone industry as one that appears to be doing better than others. That seemed to be the case at the Agri Spray Drones booth, as founder Taylor Moreland showed off the new EAVision J150 drone. But he wanted to make sure it was battle-tested before its big reveal. That’s why he brought one with over 11,000 acres on it to the show. 

“Every drone brought to market, whenever it’s announced, nobody has tested them. It’s just brought to market. It comes from China, or wherever it comes from, and they don’t use drones like we do. They test them there, but they don’t use them like we do here in the U.S. We’ve learned that over our many years in this industry. What we wanted to do, before we actually launched it, let’s get over 10,000 acres on at least one unit. And then let’s run at least a couple dozen with other operators doing real world applications. Since June, there have been several dozen flying with different operators. We said if we’re not spraying for a customer, doing fungicide or cover crops, then we’re just going to be spraying water. We’re just trying to rack up hours on it. What’s going to break first before we launch it. We’ve replaced two parts, that’s it.” 

The EAVision J150 drone has a 20-gallon tank, 180-pound spreader capacity and can cover 65-plus acres per hour at 30 MPH max speed.