Go behind the scenes with Chad Baker, co-owner of Baker Precision Planter Works in Orangeville, Ill., as he hits the road for on-farm visits and pre-season maintenance checkups. Baker helps a first-generation no-tiller prepare for planting season, and later runs into a couple big challenges with a customer’s new, high-speed, 24-row planter.

Big news in the drone world — the Federal Aviation Administration recently granted Texas-based drone builder Hylio a regulatory exemption that will allow it to swarm its heavy-lift drones with only one operator in control. Hylio co-founder and CEO Arthur Erickson says the development was a case of regulations catching up with existing technology and promises a 3-fold increase in productivity for drone operators applying material to crops, plus a significant reduction in their labor requirements. 

We’ve covered autonomy extensively here in the Technology Corner. We’ve seen retrofit kits used for mowing and tillage, but what about planting cover crops? Jake Warford, precision specialist with Linco-Precision in Nokomis, Ill., tells us they’re just scratching the surface when it comes to implementing autonomy in their customers’ operations.

Today we’re spotlighting Trimble’s new see and spray technology. It’s called the Bilberry system — a camera-based system that enables farmers to save up to 90% on herbicide applications by only spraying where the weeds are in the field. And as Trimble’s Cory Buchs tells us, one of the best things about it is it retrofits to existing sprayers.