Drone vs Tractor

We wanted to compare the time and expense of using a traditional farm tractor compared to a drone for seeding a new pasture. While there are some things a tractor can do that a drone will never do, there is a reasonable case to be made for seeding, fertilizing, chemical applications where the drone may be much more cost effective. one of our core beliefs is that having expensive assets that sit idle a huge percentage of the time is never a good investment. We will have many experiments around this comparison and finding ways of accomplishing the work traditionally done with a farm tractor. This drone experiment is simply the first one of many to come.
Our Setup Details:We certainly used very expensive heavy equipment to accomplish the removal of the "slash" from timber harvesting, including, stumping, mulching, excavating, building roads etc. We did not purchase any of this equipment and instead contracted with a company to do that work for us.
We did have access to a borrowed 1998 Ford 130(I love that machine) which we used for dragging a chain harrow, and operating a large 3 point seeder in our comparison. Our philosophy is to borrow or rent equipment that is needed unless we know we can keep the equipment busy working at least 50% of the time. The monthly payment on large equipment can be a huge burden on a small farm. If you look at the cost per hour used over the years it becomes clear that it is a burden not a benefit unless you can keep it busy.
While we looked at purchasing our own drone, I wanted to very much, we decided to only hire drone services from a professional provider. It is on this basis that we will do our financial comparison. We knew that our own drone would sit idle at least 70% of the time.
Also: While we may not pay out of pocket for our time to ride a tractor, that time certainly has value and we will attempt to include that in our evaluation.
Drone Advantages:
Drone technology provides a few clear advantages and one of the biggest is time. In our situation, we found that we cold do a single pass over all pastures in less than 2 hours using a drone. The same work would have taken days on a tractor and in the case of our stumped pastures, would have not been possible.
Drones do not have any adverse impact on the soil, in particular, no compaction or rutting.
Drone speed can enable you to work ahead of the weather. In our case, we were able to schedule a drone session the day before an expected rain event and get it completed. We have learned that the closer the forecast event the more accurate it is. In several sessions, we would not have been able to complete the seeding in time. This is a HUGE advantage, especially since we have been experiencing severe drought conditions all year. If you are going to get a rain you need to have the seed down.
Drones can spread seed or amendments very accurately, with a good operator, so that you dispense at the proper rate based on your goals and your budget.
Drones do not care about the terrain. We intentionally kept half of our pastures stumpy, to minimize the soil disturbance after the timber operations as a way to compare the damage and recovery time of having a smooth pasture. See Experiment 4 for details.
Outsourcing the drone work to a trusted service provider increases your availability to other duties that would have had you tied up on a tractor.
Tractor Advantages:
Tractors can not be beat for performing earth movement, earth penetration, heavy material spreading and harvesting operations.
Options:
We're comparing both methods head-to-head on real Lapeyrouse Lands acreage, with full cost, time, and results data. We made our best effort to accurately capture our time and costs using both methods for a fair comparison. Some of the results of effectiveness can only be measured over time, so this is an experiment with a long life.