Episode 36 | Are These Tools in Your Toolbox? Drones

Show Notes

Episode 36 | Are These Tools in Your Toolbox? Drones by Illinois Extension

What is The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast?

The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction podcast explores efforts to reduce nutrients in Illinois waterways from agricultural runoff to municipal wastewater with host Todd Gleason and producers Rachel Curry, Nicole Haverback and Luke Zwilling with University of Illinois Extension.

Read the blog at extension.illinois.edu/nlr/blog.

Episode 36 | Are These Tools in Your Toolbox? Drones

00:00:06:15 - 00:00:30:14

Todd Gleason

This is the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast, episode 36. Are these tools in your toolbox? Drones. I'm University of Illinois extensions Todd Gleason. Today we'll explore how drones are being used on the farm, whether that be in extension and academic settings or on the farm itself. We'll begin with the extension side and have a discussion with Dennis Bowman.

00:00:30:17 - 00:00:44:14

Dennis Bowman

I am Dennis Bowman, currently serving as interim assistant dean for AG and Natural Resources programing for extension, and also a commercial ag educator specializing in, precision agriculture and technology.

00:00:44:19 - 00:00:54:20

Todd Gleason

And speaking of technology, we're in an early adopter, a very early adopter of utilizing drones. How do you use them in your current work?

00:00:54:22 - 00:00:58:01

Dennis Bowman

So, a couple of different ways.

00:00:58:06 - 00:01:19:08

Dennis Bowman

One of the big things I've always spent a lot of my time in extension doing is teaching about crop scouting and so, well, drones are just a really great tool to extend your reach and your vision. And the time of year when you can can look at fields. So that's one of the areas where I've always, you know, you know, where I really saw drones.

00:01:19:08 - 00:01:46:09

Dennis Bowman

And one of the reasons I started investigating drones was to, to help out is this crop scouting tool. But also in my job, it just as a troubleshooting for crop problems. Getting that big picture of a field, remote sensing imagery on demand. Anytime you want it, you've got the drone. You can go out to a field and and collect the information and also to document things over time as things change throughout the season.

00:01:46:12 - 00:02:12:09

Dennis Bowman

To get an idea of, of where, problems might be occurring and to develop that record of, of different things that can go on. I work with a lot of research projects on campus, looking at different things and the way we ways we can use drones to to collect information about a crop. One of those project is, kind of a soybean variety, situation where we're trying to look at the different maturities of a whole bunch of different soybean lines.

00:02:12:11 - 00:02:37:14

Dennis Bowman

Hundreds of soybean lines. And so we can during as we approach maturity, we can start flying the drone every week and catching up. Minor changes color as those different lines start to get in, move into, maturity. And you can kind of get, you can document, what the maturity ratings and when, when the appropriate harvest time might be.

00:02:37:16 - 00:02:41:21

Todd Gleason

Are there conservation practices with which you find drones useful?

00:02:41:28 - 00:03:01:12

Dennis Bowman

Water has such a huge impact on on our crops. Both. Too little and too much. And with too much water, you can get the potholes in the field and mapping out those, areas. A drone is really handy for, for mapping out some of those wet spots and keeping track of them.

00:03:01:14 - 00:03:32:02

Dennis Bowman

And also for the erosion side of, of, of water management, you know, lot with the size of farms and some of the staff on farms. The operator may not actually operate at the a combine or, tractor in all the farms that they're, they're farming and covering every acre every year. And so, using, a bare soil, drone flight before the crop is, is planted or in the fall after harvest.

00:03:32:05 - 00:03:55:04

Dennis Bowman

You can you can look for those areas and you can see, erosion when, where it's starting to occur and see how extensive it is. And you might not be aware that, with the drones and you think of flat pictures. But the drones, by taking a series of pictures as they fly over a field, can actually do a technique that's called photogrammetry.

00:03:55:04 - 00:04:22:29

Dennis Bowman

And even just by flying over the field and taking these, this grid, these grids of pictures, you can computers can take those pictures and put them together into a 3D model. And so you can actually build an elevation model that shows the erosion, the depth of the, of the gullies. The how extensive they are. And with certain software, you can actually go in and map out the volume of soil that's been removed.

00:04:23:02 - 00:04:37:09

Dennis Bowman

By these gullies, or if you're going to do some construction practices to, to try to collect, correct these things. You can get an idea of, of how much, fill might be needed, to, to try to fix some of these problems.

00:04:37:11 - 00:04:43:03

Todd Gleason

What do you see in the near and distant future for uses, related to drones?

00:04:43:05 - 00:05:07:22

Dennis Bowman

Well, I think that the technology is going to get more automated. The processing is going to get faster. I mean, that's one of the big challenges that I have with my drones is that when I fly, a 100 acre field, and if I'm flying fairly low to get high resolution, I'm going to have over a thousand pictures that have to be merged together for me to be able to really see the whole picture.

00:05:07:24 - 00:05:30:11

Dennis Bowman

And so the the amount of computing time it takes to take all those small images and merge them into one big high resolution image, is several hours. And, it takes a lot of computer power and a lot of patience. And if something goes wrong, then you've got to start over again. So I see the software getting better.

00:05:30:11 - 00:05:54:05

Dennis Bowman

I see it getting more automated. So the, there's less, actual operator, time spent on the operation, and and the drones are out there collecting the data. Feeding it into a central location. The processing is automated, and, you can actually just jump right into looking at the images. Doing the analysis, doing the comparisons.

00:05:54:08 - 00:06:18:16

Dennis Bowman

Having the that historical record automated and made for you. So you can just look from one map to the next and, and and and automatically it so it highlights where the differences have occurred. So there's some really neat things that I think are happening. And also the different wavelengths. A lot of times we really focus in on just the visual wavelengths that we look at with our eyes.

00:06:18:18 - 00:06:39:11

Dennis Bowman

They can tell us a lot, but by looking at some of these other wavelengths, that can tell us more about maybe the organic matter levels in different parts of the field and the surface of the soil, the water holding capacity, and then the crop health. Some of those indices that we can use to, to map, where the stress spots are in the field.

00:06:39:17 - 00:07:06:02

Todd Gleason

Clearly, drones can be fun. They can be used to, simply document video of harvest or planting or those sorts of things that are great to look at. However, for agricultural purposes, are there, other things that you need to be aware of related to licensing or rules? And how you might go about actually putting this into use on the farm.

00:07:06:04 - 00:07:36:20

Dennis Bowman

Absolutely. So, I mean, you do if you're going to use a drone for your business, you do need, an FAA, pilot's license for unmanned aerial vehicles. In order to operate that for any business purpose. The license is good for two years. You have to pass a fairly extensive test. There's, several online courses or, weekend courses that you could take that can get you up to speed pretty quickly.

00:07:36:22 - 00:08:04:14

Dennis Bowman

With enough knowledge to pass the exam. And it's not it's not impossible to do yourself. But, and there's a lot of online, free online resources you can use as well to, to get that information, but you do have to pass the exam. Pay the, the fee. And then, every two years, you have to, take a recurrent exam to, to make sure that you're still up on all your knowledge.

00:08:04:16 - 00:08:28:06

Dennis Bowman

And then you just need to be aware of what some of the laws are. Again, on how to use drones, and where you can safely use them if you're near an airport that causes some problems. But you need by going through the, the education to get the license, you learn the rules of where you can fly, and how to go about getting approval.

00:08:28:06 - 00:08:46:20

Dennis Bowman

If you are near an airport and you have fields, within five miles of the airport that's, operates commercially. Then, you're going to have to, to go through some extra hoops of, getting permissions. Then you learn all about that issue as you go through the study guides for the, exam.

00:08:46:23 - 00:08:53:26

Todd Gleason

Any need advice for farmers or landowners that are considered in having some drone work done on their operations.

00:08:53:28 - 00:09:20:08

Dennis Bowman

If you can get, a decent drone with, that's, fairly easy to fly, has some good cameras on it that that work in the visual spectrum. You can do that for around $1,000 or someplace between 1000 and $2000. You can get very nice. Drones that are easy to fly, will do some of these automated operations and do some of this mapping.

00:09:20:10 - 00:09:45:19

Dennis Bowman

Or you can, get more survey grade things that are going to cost a little more and have a contractor, that has, some of these, more powerful drones that can do some of this work for you. But as, as a scouting tool, I think it's it's something that a lot of farmers ought to have in their toolbox because it just it gives you that ability to get up over the field, any time you want, get back to the back of the field.

00:09:45:22 - 00:09:55:06

Dennis Bowman

See, things that you can't see from the road. Especially later in the season, as those crops get bigger, it gets much harder to see. Some of the far into those fields.

00:09:55:07 - 00:10:08:14

Todd Gleason

That was Dennis Bowman. He's interim assistant dean for ag and natural resources here on the Urbana-Champaign campus of the University of Illinois, and has specialized over the recent years in drones and their use on farms.

00:10:08:21 - 00:10:26:18

Todd Gleason

He spoke there at the end of how farmers might be able to incorporate them. And we wondered just a little bit about how producers are using drones in their operations. Scott Erickson is from the Galesburg area, and I called him and asked him about what he's doing.

00:10:26:21 - 00:10:32:25

Scott Erickson

Okay. I'm Scott Erickson, I farm with my dad and uncle on our family farm.

00:10:32:28 - 00:10:58:12

Scott Erickson

We are around the Galesburg, Illinois area, which is about an hour from Peoria. We do corn and soybeans, and we farrow to finish hogs. So we have a little bit of everything going on. Most, I would say 90% of our, crop ground is rotated corn and soybeans. And, we have the other remainder is in, corn on corn.

00:10:58:15 - 00:11:21:04

Scott Erickson

A lot of that ground is along, creek that runs pretty much through all of our farms. Seems like it seems like when my grandpa and great grandpa were trying to find farms, they look for ones that this creek ran through. Every single farm pretty much. Has it going through the middle of it. Conservation wise, we do mostly no till, we do some chisel plowing, light light plowing on the corn on corn ground.

00:11:21:06 - 00:11:22:28

Scott Erickson

But, other than that, that's about it.

00:11:23:05 - 00:11:25:13

Todd Gleason

Do you use drones in the operation?

00:11:25:14 - 00:11:41:17

Scott Erickson

I do, I have, I have a drone. I first bought it. Well, I bought my first one 4 or 5 years ago for the same reason everybody does. Just to see if I can take cool pictures around the farm. But then I kind of realized that it does work a lot.

00:11:41:19 - 00:12:03:24

Scott Erickson

I use it a lot more for work than what I anticipated. Like I said, that that ground that is, is, going into the creek, running through it. A lot of that we have flood issues, and I have gotten a better drone because I want to be able to fly over that creek line and be able to see, okay, here is holding water in here.

00:12:03:24 - 00:12:18:00

Scott Erickson

It's it's coming out here. We need to do some some erosion control or, this farm is going to need some tile because it seems like it's holding water longer than others. And yeah, I've, I've really liked using the drone in it. It seems to help us out a lot.

00:12:18:02 - 00:12:24:09

Todd Gleason

So you fly it when water is up and you can't get in, but you're able to understand how it's flowing at that point.

00:12:24:15 - 00:12:43:09

Scott Erickson

Exactly. Yeah. I could see where, like, a lot of our the creek that's running through our farms is a really deep bank creek. And, a lot of the farms are pretty much patterned, tiled. But there is some spots where you can tell when the water comes out. It takes a little bit more of the bank with it every year.

00:12:43:09 - 00:12:57:05

Scott Erickson

And it just every couple of years you had to just do some erosion control. And it's a lot easier to see that when the water's up. And it's definitely a lot easier to see when I don't have to wear mud boots to walk around out, trying to figure out where the water's coming out at.

00:12:57:09 - 00:13:03:25

Todd Gleason

Have you used it to go up and see where wet areas might be earlier in the spring?

00:13:03:27 - 00:13:15:07

Todd Gleason

And I'm thinking about the possibility of, you know, putting tile in the wet areas because you're able to locate them more easily. Given the amount of tile you apparently already have on the farm.

00:13:15:10 - 00:13:22:20

Scott Erickson

That's that's actually a really interesting question, because I just got done doing that last week. We had a pretty good rain at the beginning.

00:13:22:21 - 00:13:48:27

Scott Erickson

We just finished our planting, but the first round of planning anyways, and, we had a rain last week and I took the drone up to I was actually kind of looking at emergence to try to see where the the trouble spots would possibly be on a farm that we, I did some cover crop on last year, and when I had the drone up in the air, I could see some spots that from the air they almost looked like drowned out spots, but they weren't.

00:13:48:27 - 00:14:06:14

Scott Erickson

They're just a little wetter than what the rest of the farm is. And that that farm. I actually took some pictures and sent them to my tiling company, and they're going to come put some tile in whenever they get back around this area just to those spots, just, pretty much exactly for what you just asked me.

00:14:06:16 - 00:14:18:24

Todd Gleason

Anything about, the drones that you think producers, farmers, those interested in flying, one might want to know just about flying them or about the applications you use it for.

00:14:18:27 - 00:14:49:02

Scott Erickson

I would say the biggest thing is the, the government regulations of having to get your, your, FCC license there. It's not hard to do. It's not, it's not a tough test. It's pretty much all commonsense stuff. But there yet you do have to jump through some hoops there, just like anything. The actual flying of the drones, the, I guess I, I had said that I had had two different ones, and my first one was kind of a low dollar, one under thousand dollars.

00:14:49:04 - 00:15:13:09

Scott Erickson

And I mean, that that's still expensive, but it was hard to fly. It was one of those, it took some serious getting used to, to to be able to do what I needed to do with it. And my newer one that I purchased last year, it's a more advanced, tech, technologically wise, it's more advanced, and it was obviously more money, but it, it almost flies itself, made it.

00:15:13:09 - 00:15:29:01

Scott Erickson

It's definitely not anything to be afraid of on, I don't want to spend $2,000 on something and then not be able to fly it. It's definitely not, not anything you need to be worried about on that. It's not a very sharp learning curve on the newer, nicer stuff.

00:15:29:04 - 00:15:32:29

Todd Gleason

Have you hooked it to your field maps and do you fly patterns with it?

00:15:33:01 - 00:15:54:21

Scott Erickson

I mine will fly patterns. I don't do that. Just because I, I don't really see a whole lot of information that I need to see when I go to fly patterns. You could it's it's got a software in it to where you could do a point to point thing, and you can basically fly the four corners of the farm, whether that's an 80 or a 160 or whatever it is.

00:15:54:23 - 00:16:13:14

Scott Erickson

But I don't use that personally. But I do know some guys that do. But my, my biggest thing I use mine for is, like farm ground that we rent or, lease from, whether that be a family member or a landlord. I'll fly up and take a picture. I try to do it every week, but I don't always get it done.

00:16:13:16 - 00:16:25:15

Scott Erickson

Once the corn's up out of the ground and it'll give you a pretty good idea on the progress of the farm. And you don't have to do that Sunday afternoon drive to go take a look at the farm to see what things are doing.

00:16:25:19 - 00:16:36:15

Todd Gleason

That’s Scott Erickson, he's a farmer near Galesburg, Illinois. And as you just heard, he does deploy a drone from time to time for a little landlord maintenance during the growing season.

00:16:36:18 - 00:16:47:13

Todd Gleason

We're now joined by Teresa Steckler. She works for University of Illinois Extension and specializes in beef production. I'll have her introduce herself.

00:16:47:15 - 00:17:07:17

Teresa Steckler

All right. I am Teresa Steckler. I'm a commercial ag educator. My office is located at the Dixon Springs AG Center. I work primarily with ruminant livestock producers. Beef is the bulk of that. But I also work with small ruminant producers, sheep and goats as well.

00:17:07:19 - 00:17:09:24

Teresa Steckler

I have state wide responsibilities.

00:17:09:27 - 00:17:18:20

Todd Gleason

You know, we've talked about crop scouting with drones earlier in this podcast. How do you use them in your research and with livestock?

00:17:18:23 - 00:17:38:25

Teresa Steckler

I am currently trying to recruit cattlemen who need assistance with their pastures. The last several years in southern Illinois, we've had very poor spring weather, wet and cold, which didn't lend itself to the growth of, forages very well.

00:17:38:25 - 00:18:05:09

Teresa Steckler

And in the falls we've had some very dry falls. And the culmination of all of this is a lot of overgrazing of our pastures. The pastures just haven't had time to be rested. And once you have pastures that are overgrazed, that lends itself to having invasive species or forages that do not, are not very consumable for the livestock, such as multiflora

00:18:05:22 - 00:18:43:23

Teresa Steckler

rose, your horse weeds, thorn trees, pigweed. And you need to, give these pastures time to recuperate. And unfortunately, a lot of these gentlemen just don't have that option. So one of the things that I've been trying to do is get, cattlemen to do at least more of a rotational graze. That is that way that the, the grasses have somewhere between 3 to 5 days, maybe seven days to recover from being grazed and also working with them.

00:18:43:23 - 00:19:32:24

Teresa Steckler

Spot spring. Well, one of the nice things that the drones can do is instead of having to go drive over the entire pasture, we can just fly over and it's quicker, it's easier, and the cattlemen actually can get a whole different perspective of and really target those areas and, possibly set aside the really poor sections and, work on those as far as spot spraying and, either bush hog and also helps us to figure out the lay of the land where the, creeks might be and how we can work with waters, whether we need to make a wagon wheel up or take a wagon wheel approach or just make squares out of

00:19:32:24 - 00:19:38:21

Teresa Steckler

it, but figure out what's the best layout that's the easiest for the cattlemen to implement these changes.

00:19:38:23 - 00:19:43:27

Todd Gleason

Any advice to those who want to start using drones in their operations?

00:19:43:29 - 00:20:15:09

Teresa Steckler

First you must be, have a license to be able to operate them. And that's really not a bad process. There's some really good companies out there, but probably, you know, one of the biggest things is take the time to really look over your pastures get a, before you just go out there, get a plan in mind and figure out how you can optimize your grass production.

00:20:15:12 - 00:20:38:04

Teresa Steckler

The best thing to do is let those girls harvest the grass, as opposed to you feeding them hay in the fall time. And I've worked with a lot of producers not using a drone, but setting up rotational grazing and generally, depending on the season, we can get an additional month of grazing out of those areas that are rotationally grazed.

00:20:38:07 - 00:21:05:05

Todd Gleason

Teresa Steckler is with the University of Illinois Extension and a commercial agriculture educator. She was joined on this episode 36 of the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Podcast by Dennis Bowman, also an extension commercial agriculture educator from the University of Illinois, along with Scott Erickson, who's a farmer from the Galesburg area. Our program was produced in conjunction with Illinois Extension Watershed Outreach Associates.

00:21:05:07 - 00:21:10:11

Todd Gleason

Jennifer Jones and Rachel Curry. I'm Illinois Extension's Todd Gleason.