Iowa City based company Rantizo is making waves in the farming community with their new drone systems aimed at making crop dusting more efficient.
"One of the overarching issues is population is growing but there are fewer people working in agriculture," Michael Ott, the CEO for Rantizo said. "We need to be more precise and use technology and automation that's exactly what we are doing, understanding what the core problems are which is labor and availability of chemicals and delivering right where they need to be."
Rantizo's drone system, while in its infancy has already proven it can be more efficient and cost effective than classic crop dusting airplanes or ground machinery. Drones can spray 13 acres an hour or 100 acres in a day. They run an automated spray program that figures out where crop dusting is needed. Through it's programmed pathway it becomes more efficient distributing chemicals where they need to go.
"We understand where the spray needs to go and just deliver it to those spots," Ott said. "All versus covering the entire field that you only need in a few locations but with a ground that you have to cover all or nothing so you end up covering more than you need."
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