09-04-2025
Eye on KELOLAND: Drones in agriculture
DEUEL COUNTY, S.D. (KELO) — No matter the field, technology is always evolving and advancing.
'I can do fertilizers,' Derek Ver Helst, owner of Dakota Unmanned Aerial, said about what he can deliver with his drone. 'I can do pesticides, and I can do also cover crops where I do seeding within, interseeding within crops, or I can do seeding within pastures or different kinds of things, just to get more kinds of species out there, diversify pastures, get more productivity out of those pastures and better feed quality for our cattle.'
Ver Helst, who lives in the Brandt, S.D. area, has been spraying Gary Bandemer's land with a drone for a couple years, and Bandemer appreciates the precision.
'What I really like about it is he gets the spots that an airplane or a helicopter can't get,' Bandemer said. 'You get in the corners of the pasture, real steep slopes and stuff, and it just does a better job.'
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Bandemer farms corn and soybeans east of Toronto in eastern South Dakota. Ver Helst's spraying, he explains, is considerably more efficient than if he would spray.
'I'd take my four-wheeler out to spray … it takes you two, three days, where he can come just do it in a day or less,' Bandemer said.
Ver Helst does his work in Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota in addition to South Dakota.
'I've done some pasture spraying for Gary in the past couple years,' Ver Helst said. 'We were targeting bull and Canadian thistles, so taking care of invasive species. So, a lot of my spraying is in pastures looking at thistles and leafy spurge are some of the big ones that I'm after.'
'Optimization means use your resources, and the question is how can I do it better,' South Dakota State University researcher and professor Ali Nafchi said. 'Just little better and better and better, and the compound effect of this little by little by little would be huge.'
Nearby at SDSU, Nafchi says drones allow for just that.
'I know I'm going to spray, but when,' Nafchi said. 'But where. Drones have answers for those questions for me.'
While in the area, a visitor might also meet Brady Hauswedell, who lives south of Toronto. His work with a drone highlights the technology's value in providing a unique view.
'The drone has been a very valuable tool for us in order to measure these differences because sometimes to the naked eye it might not look like a big difference until you're able to put it through a computer program,' Hauswedell said.
It all allows him to evaluate the impact of, for example, a fertilizer.
'With measuring the differences, it's usually the color of, like, how green a plant is or how much leaf surface is in an image,' Hauswedell said. 'That's how it's specifically seeing those differences.'
A drone might at first look a bit out of place in rural America. But, after all, there was a time when even a combine would have looked futuristic. Now, drones are another way farmers can do their essential work.
'One of those tools that they have in their back pocket to continue to provide fiber and food for everyone in the world,' Ver Helst said.
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