Building Agricultural UAV Spraying Before There Was a Playbook

Quick summary

Before large payloads, RTK positioning, and automated terrain following became mainstream, using drones for commercial crop spraying was met with widespread skepticism. This is the story of the early days of Western agricultural UAV industry—a time when there was no operational playbook, no proven workflows, and a critical need to bridge the gap between emerging technology and the practical realities of production farming.