Bret Chilcott grew up in a rural Kansas community of only 786 people. As a kid, he earned money by helping out on local farms. He said that he spent every penny earned on model planes and flying lessons. This early obsession would lead him down a path to becoming one of the most successful drone providers in the United States. Fate led Bret to contact Kansas State University to see if an unmanned aerial research project being conducted there could use his services as a composite materials provider. With help from Kansas State researcher Deon van der Merwe, Bret founded AgEagle out of Neodesha, KS in 2010.

AgEagle was designed with farmers in mind. Bret and the team from Kansas State developed a simple drone that could be used to monitor and collect critical farm data. Since branching off from the university in 2013, AgEagle has greatly enhanced its drones and software to become a premier commercial drone company. As drone technology grew, their place in the field of agriculture also grew. AgEagle quickly realized that they needed to find a niche within the agricultural market to solidify their business.

So, AgEagle went after what was proving to be one of the fastest growing agricultural trends in the United States, hemp. “As hemp started to become a burgeoning new industry — we began to see it boom around 2016-18 — we realized an opportunity to jump into that world as well as assess other various agricultural commodities,” said Steve Turetsky, AgEagle’s director of agriculture solutions. With the global hemp market bringing in an estimated $4.7 billlion, AgEagle jumped on the opportunity to partner up with hemp growers in Florida.

AgEagle developed a software program specific to the needs of hemp growers called Hemp Overview. Often confused with marijuana, hemp is grown for a wide range of “sober” industrial purposes. Still, the crop is heavily regulated. With Hemp Overview’s drone platform, hemp farmers have the tools needed for automated success. “State governments have a responsibility to license and regulate farmers who are growing hemp, with the main intent to prevent the leakage of residual THC into the marketplace, in order to keep hemp as an agricultural commodity, as opposed to a controlled substance,” said Steve.

With a simple to use app, Hemp Overview sorts through the visual data collected by an AgEagle drone. The software allows farmers to quickly and easily ensure that they are growing productive female plants in their crops. “You’re typically looking at one in 10,000 males per total plants,” Steve explained. “It’s really looking for a needle in a haystack.” The drone makes it so that the farmers can find that needle in the haystack, time and cost effectively. The drones also manage other metric crop data such as hydration levels, pest invasions, and most importantly, the levels of THC present to comply with regulations.

As the director of cannabis at the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Holly Bell predicts that Florida’s hemp industry will come close to matching half of the state’s citrus industry. Up until now, hemp growers have had to rely on self regulation to meet standards. This represents far too much discrepancy for market stability. Florida’s Department of Agriculture partnering with AgEagle will establish a reliable way to use drones for safe regulations.