Nelson Zandbergen
Farmers Forum
CHATHAM-KENT — Drones are dropping seed and fertilizer onto some Ontario farm fields this season. It’s a niche market that keeps contractor Adrian Rivard busy enough — until the day that regulators fully unleash the technology by adding pesticides to a drone’s legally permitted cargo in Canada.
“Once the industry opens up for pesticides, things are going to go gangbusters,” predicted Rivard, a 36-year-old former airline pilot and owner of Drone Spray Canada Inc., one of only a handful of custom drone-work operators serving the ag sector in Canada today. He doesn’t know of any agri-drone operators in Eastern Ontario.
Rivard left the aviation industry a few years ago to cash-crop 300 acres in Blenheim and set up his drone business. Serving southwestern Ontario, the airborne operation is now in its third season offering the in-field drone services currently allowed by law — broadcast seeding and fertilizer application.
So far in 2023, he said, the company has serviced about 1,500 acres, already more than all of last year.
He estimated that 90% of his calls are from people asking if he can apply pesticides. However, he obeys the rules and turns those inquiries down. He predicted that pesticide application with drones will be approved in Canada in 2025, though it is already happening in the United States.
One day, he foresees drones spraying entire fields of tall corn with fungicide the way helicopters currently do. Flying about 6-ft. above the crop, the drone units are useful for spot-spraying problem areas where weeds have shot up. “Nobody wants to carry a backpack sprayer half a mile into the field to do that right now,” he pointed out.
He assisted with a major agricultural corporation’s specially licensed research trials involving drone-applied fungicides last year, and “the results are fantastic,” he said. Every major pesticide maker, he noted, is testing their products with drones to ensure they’ll be ready once the regulators give the go-ahead in Canada.
Drones are similarly suited for spot-spraying of fertilizer. For example, Rivard looked forward to fixing a problem left by a fertilizer floater trucker with a clogged boom earlier this spring. The emerging wheat crop at the affected client’s farm has strips of yellow where the plants were starved of nitrogen. The drone will target just those strips in need of a nutrient touch-up, he said.
Rivard operates five drones, three units with 10 kg payloads and two larger units capable of carrying 40 kg and 50 kg. The drones broadcast seed or fertilizer over a 21-foot swath. The drones can work at rates he says are economically competitive with large farm equipment and helicopters — seeding at $12 per acre (dropping up to 25 lb. of seed per acre) and fertilizer application at $20 per acre (dropping up to 100 lb. of fertilizer per acre). Fertilizer is applied in both pellet and liquid (urea) forms.
“Yesterday, we were doing urea on canola,” he said.
The units can service 20 acres per hour, he said, and fly constantly between fill-ups of fertilizer or seed. Each flight lasts about 7 minutes, and the unit returns to be resupplied with spreading material by a crew at the side of the field. The quick pit stop includes swapping in a freshly charged battery: A conventional 10,000 kw generator keeps a rotation of at least three batteries charged up to keep the drone consistently in the air until the job is done.
While he concedes that four-wheeler ATVs can seed more cheaply into pasture, some clients are willing to pay extra for the advantage of having no wheels running through their pasture and hayfields, especially if it’s wet. But the tire-free advantage of drone application becomes essential when seeding cover crops, like rye and clover, into standing wheat, corn and soybeans before harvest.
Drones accurately apply their cargo based on mapped out flight paths followed by the onboard computer. The machines are autonomous but follow the commands of a licensed operator on the ground who must keep the drone within line of sight. Rivard is one of two licensed drone “pilots” employed with his company. Passing the Transport Canada licence requirements for his bigger drone units — each worth about $50,000 — was a 6-month process and fairly challenging even for an actual jet pilot like himself.
His company’s drones also get some work spraying a film over the glass roofs of large greenhouses to protect the plants from burning during the height of summer.
Drones are still rare doing actual work in the fields of Ontario, and they do turn heads, he said, especially when flying over fields at night with their lights on.
Jason Deveau, application technology specialist with Ontario’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs, said more research is necessary and many technical issues to be sorted out about minimizing “spray drift” before wider use is approved. The provinces and two federal agencies — Health Canada and the Pest Management Regulatory Agency — all have a say, as do agri-chemical companies.
Because of their limited payload, drones must carry pesticides in more concentrated form. Deveau explained that the manufacturers must establish performance and safety at those higher concentrations. “Does it have some adverse effect we weren’t aware of because it’s going on in a way we’ve never really looked at before?”
