been running about 400 acres of corn and soybeans for the past few years and we still do most of our scouting on foot or with an ATV which honestly takes forever and by the time we catch something like early stage nitrogen deficiency or fungal pressure its already spread further than we'd like. my neighbor picked up a mavic 3 multispectral last season and swears by it but i dont know if thats overkill for what we need or if the cheaper rgb setups can do enough for basic field health checks.

main thing i want to know is whether the NDVI data you get from something like the m3m actually gives you actionable info or if youre spending half your time just staring at false color maps trying to figure out whats actually wrong. i've seen some of the outputs and honestly they look cool but im not sure how much ground truth you still need to do alongside it.

also curious what software people are using for the analysis side ? agras, dji terra, something else? feels like the drone is almost the cheaper part of the whole equation once you factor in subscriptions and processing time.

the m3m is solid but you're right that rgb can get you pretty far for basic scouting if thats all you need. we used a phantom 4 pro for two seasons before upgrading and honestly for spotting obvious stress, water pooling, weed pressure in early stages it did the job fine. the multispectral stuff starts earning its keep when you want to quantify things or when stress isnt visually obvious yet ? like early drought stress before the leaves actually curl up or subtle nutrient deficiency that looks green to the eye but is already showing in the NIR band.

on the software side we mostly use dji terra for the captures and then push into agworld for the prescription maps. its not perfect and the learning curve took a while but its workable. some guys in our area use pix4dfields which i hear is more tuned for ag specifically but ive not used it myself. either way yeah the subscriptions add up fast, its not nothing.

so i just started doing this for a smaller operation like 120 acres and honestly even with a basic rgb drone the time savings vs walking fields is massive. i can cover the whole property in like 45 mins and get a decent orthomosaic that lets me see patterns i definitely wasnt catching on foot. ground truth is still necessary though, thats not something the drone replaces, you still gotta go walk the flagged areas. but at least now i know WHERE to walk instead of just wandering around hoping to find something.