I spoke with some aerial applicators a few years back that I used to work with when I was in the fertilizer business. Asked them if they were worried about drones possibly taking part of their business and they just laughed. They told me the payload on the drones would never make them serious competition.

Then a couple of years later they admitted they'd lost some of their business to drones but they weren't worried it would ever be all that much. I told them that there was one way to make sure it never would hurt them and that was to get into drone spraying themselves.

A large majority of farmers will want someone else to do it for them. I said you know the customer, you know their fields and are well versed with the chemicals. They said I don't know, but you could see they were thinking hard. These guys were second generation aerial applicators and if their kids wanted to enter the business they sure needed to consider it. One of them has a son in college who is already a pilot.