2014 LOGAN COUNTY FARM OUTLOOK MAGAZINE LINCOLN DAILY NEWS.com MARCH 27, 2014 31
On the left Perry Grieme and on the right Rory Paul.
Photos by Nila Smith
Continued to page 32
The drone’s ability to survey a field is unmatched
in time and precision. Paul predicts that it will have
billions of dollars of impact on the ag industry.
While the farmer used to walk the field looking
for uncontrolled weeds and a myriad of other crop
symptoms, now the drone does it in much less time.
The drone’s camera is capable of a great number of
functions. You can program it for streaming video,
linking it back to a laptop, set it to take images
every so many seconds or record images to its
memory stick. These images allow for observation
of crop health, uniform application of fertilizer and
identification of possible problem spots that may
need to be addressed in a field. For example, many
farmers have currently been using the photos to find
areas that are experiencing “ponding” as the snow
melts.
In a recent interview with Greg Grathwohl, of
Grathwohl Farms in the Mount Pulaski area, he
shared his knowledge of how he plans to use his new
drone in their farm application.
While the drone is very small in size, about 20
inches across, his is of the rotary style and weighs
in at 2.5 pounds with the camera attached. Equipped
with a GoPro digital camera, it provides very high-
resolution photos. While flyable in winds up to 15
mph, it has a top traveling speed of 50 mph while
taking pictures.
Grathwohl plans to use his drone to survey the farm’s
soybean crop. As the beans mature and get bushier, it
is harder to tell if there are resistant weeds that may
damage the yields. His drone has the ability to be
controlled by a joystick controller, similar to a video
game, and this is effective up to a half-mile away.
Attached to a laptop, the drone is controllable up to
a mile away. It also possesses a feature that with a
touch of a button will automatically return the drone to
where it took off.
