Let’s say a DJI Agras T100 setup costs about C$65K -75K all-in by the time you have the drone, batteries, charging equipment, generator, spreader, and the other pieces you need to actually get to the field and work.
Is it worth owning?
That’s a fair question. But before talking about technology — and definitely before assuming a big yield increase — I’d want to sit down and answer a few much simpler questions.
What does it really cost me to spray an acre myself?
How much am I paying someone else to do it?
How many acres will I actually put through this machine every year?
And if I’m making an application to protect yield, how many bushels do I need to save before I get my money back?
That’s where I’d start.
“If custom application is C$15/acre, what does it cost me to do it myself?”
Let’s use C$15/acre as our custom-application benchmark.
Once you own the drone, that C$15 custom bill goes away. But spraying obviously isn’t free.
We currently estimate battery-cycle cost at about C$0.52/acre. Then there’s generator fuel, labour, maintenance, insurance, transportation, and all the little things that come with running equipment in the field.
A working budget might look something like this:
| Operating Cost | Budget per Acre |
| Battery-cycle cost | C$0.52 |
| Generator fuel | C$0.30–0.60 |
| Labour | C$1.50–2.50 |
| Maintenance and wear items | C$0.30–0.60 |
| Insurance, training and annual costs | C$0.20–0.50 |
| Pickup / trailer / field transportation | C$0.30–0.70 |
| Other operating expenses | C$0.20–0.50 |
| Estimated range | About C$3.30–5.90/acre |
For the rest of the discussion, let’s use C$6/acre.
Not because every T100 costs exactly C$6/acre to operate. It doesn’t.
We’re using C$6 because I’d rather be a little conservative when budgeting than make the ROI look better by assuming everything goes perfectly.
Once you own the machine, replace our number with yours:
Total operating expenses ÷ actual acres completed = your real operating cost per acre.
And labour is a good example of why that number can change quickly. If an operator and field support cost C$400 for the day, doing 200 acres puts C$2/acre of labour into the job. Finish 400 acres and that drops to C$1.
So when somebody tells me how many acres a drone can cover “per hour,” that’s interesting.
But I’d still ask:
“How many acres did you actually finish today?”
Because that’s the number that eventually shows up in the farm’s books.
“But I spent C$65,000. How do I account for the machine?”
This is where I think equipment ROI can get misleading.
You can’t take a C$65,000 machine, charge the whole purchase price against Year One, and pretend it’s worth zero at the end of the season.
You’re going to use it again.
And at some point, it should still have some resale or trade-in value.
So let’s say, purely for budgeting, that we plan to own it for five years.
We are not saying a T100 only lasts five years. Five years is simply our ownership period for this example.
And because we don’t have reliable five-year resale data yet, let’s not pretend we know exactly what it will be worth.
Instead, we can test a few possibilities:
| Value After 5 Years | Total Depreciation | Average per Year |
| C$10,000 | C$55,000 | C$11,000 |
| C$20,000 | C$45,000 | C$9,000 |
| C$30,000 | C$35,000 | C$7,000 |
Let’s use the middle case.
A C$65,000 purchase with C$20,000 of value left after five years means we’ve consumed C$45,000 of equipment value, or about:
C$9,000 per year.
Now we can ask a much more useful question:
“How many acres do I need every year to spread that C$9,000 over?”
This is where annual acre-passes really matter
Using C$9,000/year depreciation + C$6/acre operating cost, here’s what the math looks like against C$15 custom application:
| Annual Acre-Passes | Estimated Ownership Cost | Custom | Difference |
| 500 | C$24.00/acre | C$15 | Hire saves C$9.00 |
| 1,000 | C$15.00 | C$15 | About even |
| 1,500 | C$12.00 | C$15 | Own saves C$3.00 |
| 2,000 | C$10.50 | C$15 | Own saves C$4.50 |
| 3,000 | C$9.00 | C$15 | Own saves C$6.00 |
| 5,000 | C$7.80 | C$15 | Own saves C$7.20 |
Now we’re getting somewhere.
If you only have 500 acre-passes a year and there’s a good operator nearby charging C$15, I’d have a hard time buying the machine just to say I own it.
At 1,000 acre-passes, the numbers are getting close.
At 2,000 or 3,000, ownership starts looking quite different.
And notice I said acre-passes, not farm acres.
A 2,000-acre farm with one suitable application gives the drone 2,000 acre-passes of work. Two applications gives it 4,000.
But I wouldn’t go looking for something else to spray just because I bought a C$65,000 machine.
The drone should fit the crop plan. The crop plan shouldn’t be built around keeping the drone busy.
“If I’m only saving C$3 an acre, why wouldn’t I just keep hiring it out?”
Exactly.
Suppose you run 1,500 acre-passes a year. Our simplified model says ownership is around C$12/acre, versus C$15 to hire it out.
That’s a C$3 difference.
For C$3 more, somebody else brings the equipment, handles the operation, deals with the batteries, transportation, maintenance and flight planning, and you don’t have to think about any of it.
That may be a very good deal.
So saving a few dollars per acre, by itself, is not always enough reason to own.
But then I’d ask one more question:
“When I need him, can he actually get here?”
That’s where the conversation changes.
Timing may be worth more than a few dollars per acre
When an application window opens, you’re probably not the only farm making the phone call.
The crop doesn’t care that the applicator has six farms ahead of you.
The weather doesn’t care either.
If you already work with a good operator who can consistently get to your fields when you need him, I’d put real value on that relationship.
Keep hiring him.
But if every important spray window turns into a waiting list, owning the equipment gives you something that doesn’t show up neatly in the C$/acre table:
Control of timing.
For some farms, that might not be worth much.
For another farm, it may be the biggest reason to own the machine.
And there’s a flip side.
If field mapping, power lines, trees, buildings, roads, obstacles and flight planning aren’t things you’re comfortable managing, don’t force yourself into being the operator just to save a few dollars.
Hire somebody who is good at it.
A good application is more important than owning the machine that makes it.
“Fine. But does the application actually make me money?”
Now we’re asking the question that matters most.
It’s tempting to start with:
“Can a drone give me 10% more yield?”
I wouldn’t budget that way.
The drone itself doesn’t create yield. What matters is what you’re applying, why you’re applying it, disease or crop pressure, timing, weather, and application quality.
For the farmer, I think there’s a much better question:
“How many bushels do I need to protect before I get my money back?”
Let’s use corn.
| Item | Assumption |
| Baseline yield | 175 bu/acre |
| Corn cash price | C$6.00/bu |
| Product / treatment | C$20/acre |
| Custom application | C$15/acre |
| Total treatment cost | C$35/acre |
At C$6 corn:
C$35 ÷ C$6 = 5.83 bu/acre.
On a 175-bushel crop, that’s about:
3.3%.
That’s the number I want to know before I start talking about a 10% yield response.
Because if I only need to protect 5.8 bushels to break even, now I can have a real agronomic conversation:
Given this crop, this field, this disease pressure and this timing, is protecting six bushels realistic?
That’s a much better question than asking whether a drone “increases yield.”
Put the yield response into dollars
Using the same 175 bu/acre, C$6 corn and C$35 treatment cost:
| Yield Protected / Added | Value | Net After C$35 Cost |
| 1% | C$10.50/acre | -C$24.50 |
| 3% | C$31.50/acre | -C$3.50 |
| 3.3% | ~C$35/acre | Break-even |
| 5% | C$52.50/acre | +C$17.50 |
| 10% | C$105.00/acre | +C$70.00 |