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Randy R. Price
Sprayer drones are relatively new tools available to farmers, consultants and aerial applicators to spray inputs, such as pesticides or ripening agents, on crops. LSU AgCenter researchers and Extension personnel are studying their flight characteristics, operational procedures and application patterns to make recommendations to a variety of agricultural producers.
As these tools improve, Louisiana is seeing a continued increase of sprayer drones. Operators are still not spraying as many acres as manned aircraft, which are commonly called crop dusters, but numbers are growing each year. However, experts expect producers to adopt the technologies in coming years. One manufacturer stated that Louisiana will be a prime state for sprayer drone sales because farming occurs nearly 10 months out of the year.
Cost
Currently, sprayer drones are inexpensive when compared with other agricultural equipment purchases, costing between $10,000 and $50,000, and typically coming as a kit with all the items needed to operate. These include a sprayer drone, controller, three batteries and a high-speed charger. Users will also need a service truck or trailer with tanks, mixing equipment, high-capacity pumps capable of pumping more than 10 gallons per minute and a large size generator (13,000 to 27,000 watts). All these items, depending upon setup, can cost more than the drone itself.
Drone availability
Much has changed in the last year. China was the leading manufacturer of drones and all but dominated foreign and U.S. markets. Then, in December 2025, a new law came into effect that mandated that any drone sold in the U.S. had to be manufactured by a company at least partly based in the U.S. This greatly changed the landscape of drones in the U.S., giving U.S. companies a chance for market success and survival against low-cost Asian brands.
Current rules
To operate a sprayer drone in Louisiana, users will need multiple licenses from both the federal and state government including:
Calibration
An important aspect of using a sprayer drone is getting to know its flight properties and spray characteristics. Each drone has a particular travel speed, application height, nozzle setting and flowrate, and these need to be set to create the best and most efficient application pattern and swath width. Determination of these aspects can be quite hard with visual cues alone, and pattern testing is needed. The LSU AgCenter has pattern-testing equipment that can help you determine these aspects.
Future precision farming aspects
The future of precision farming with sprayer drones is quite good. Their small sizes (less than 20 gallons), swath widths and automated flight capabilities lend them well to performing site-specific farming applications. Still, they are rarely used for this purpose because economically viable variable rate solutions, which allow drones to spray only the needed amount of an input on a predetermined segment of a crop, do not exist yet. If they did, AgCenter researchers suspect, more producers would be using them. Still, sprayer drones are well suited for this type of application because they are able to easily treat small areas with different tank loads.
Randy Price is an agricultural engineer at the AgCenter Dean Lee Research and Extension Center in Alexandria.
This article appears in the summer 2026 edition of Louisiana Agriculture.
A sprayer drone flown by agricultural engineer Randy Price flies over sugarcane near Alexandria during a spraying trial. Photo by Kyle Peveto
A sprayer drone flies over sugarcane near Alexandria during a spraying trial while another drone waits to be tested. Photo by Kyle Peveto
