so background: i run about 340 acres of corn and soybeans in central illinois, been doing this for about 12 years now. always scouted manually or hired someone to walk fields which honestly works fine but takes forever especially mid-season when everything is happening at once.

been looking at getting something like the DJI Mavic 3 Multispectral for NDVI mapping, maybe pair it with some kind of software subscription to actually make sense of the data. the setup cost is kind of insane when you stack it all up ? drone, software, maybe a ground station, Part 107 if i dont already have one.

my question is more practical than technical i guess ? for guys actually doing this on farms your own size or similar, are you catching stuff early enough to make a real difference in yield? like i know the tech works in theory but does it actually justify the time you spend learning the software and flying the missions. my agronomist is kind of skeptical and just tells me to keep walking the fields

ive been doing multispectral on my family's operation for going on three seasons now, around 500 acres mixed corn/wheat. honest answer is the first year was mostly me learning to not screw up the data processing and misinterpret NDVI variability as actual stress when it was just soil type differences at emergence. so year one basically felt like an expensive hobby.

year two and three though its genuinely changed how we scout. caught a nitrogen deficiency on one field about two weeks before i wouldve noticed walking it, ended up doing a variable rate top dress application that i dont think i wouldve justified without the imagery. whether that pays for the drone hardware over time i honestly cant calculate cleanly, but it does feel like im making better decisions more often than before. your agronomist will come around once they see the outputs, most of them are just used to the old workflow

not at your scale but i help a neighbor scout his fields and we use a Autel Evo II multispectral which is a bit cheaper entry point than the DJI if cost is a concern. the software side is honestly the bigger commitment ? like the flying part you figure out pretty fast but learning to actually read the maps and not just stare at pretty colors takes a while. just something to factor in before you budget