By 5.30am, Jonathan Chick is loading agricultural drones, batteries and a 17kVA diesel generator onto his trailer, ready to move between spraying, spreading and mapping jobs.

One battery powers the drone, another charges and a third waits ready. The aircraft is programmed to map paddocks automatically, but Chick’s work isn’t hands-off. He watches for obstacles, checks application rates and reloads the payload each time it lands, often finishing about 5pm before driving home.

It is a working life built around new technology, but Chick says its success depends on something much older: trust.

Chick’s Waroona-based business, NextGen AgTech, sprays, spreads and maps by drone across Western Australia. It also sells agricultural drones and provides training and repairs. 

For Chick, agriculture came before technology. He was born on his family’s sugarcane farm in South Africa and moved to Australia when he was five. Before the age of ten, he spent school holidays on sheep and cattle stations in Central Queensland.

“I just always loved agriculture,” he says.

That interest led him to study agribusiness at Curtin University. Agricultural drones then began appearing on his social media feeds. Chick says only one or two operators were working with the technology in WA, and he saw an opportunity.

He first watched a DJI T50 agricultural drone operate near Boyup Brook in February 2021. Within months, he was flying one himself.

Before founding NextGen AgTech, Chick worked in grain broking, agricultural sales and construction. Grain broking showed him working with farmers required more than a sales pitch.

Chick later began casual work at Alcoa, using drones to spread fertiliser during rehabilitation. The company had replaced helicopters with drones on safety grounds. He continues to work there alongside his role at NextGen AgTech.

Chick says he had watched sellers hand over expensive technology and leave before farmers felt confident using it. He wanted NextGen to remain involved by providing training and ongoing support.

“We really wanted to focus on only selling them a drone, if we could actually see it was going to benefit their business,” he says.

AusAgritech president Rob Hulme says that focus reflects how successful agricultural technology reaches farms. Hulme has more than 30 years’ experience across corporate agriculture, agritech and advisory work, and leads Australia’s peak agritech body. He says he saw similar technology reshape farming in China, where drones replaced elderly farmers who once manually backpack-sprayed rice paddies, encouraging younger generations to return to the land.

He says successful technology must deliver a solution rather than simply showcase its capabilities: “Making money, saving money, saving time.”

Farmers often hire Chick for one or two jobs before deciding whether to buy a drone. Hulme says this trial-first approach reduces the risk of a big capital outlay and lets farmers see how the equipment fits their operation.

Chick’s first paid NextGen job involved spreading 8.5 tonnes of fertiliser over a Harvey farm on a day the temperature reached about 35C. Spraying now costs about $35 a hectare, with low-rate jobs, such as baiting, closer to $10 to $15. His work changes with the seasons, from mapping in summer to spraying and spreading as the growing season progresses.

Loyal clients now simply send him to a paddock location and leave the chemical or fertiliser waiting.

“One of the biggest joys in my job is watching a farmer when you first start running,” he says.

Wheatbelt farmer Sam Reynolds saw the technology’s appeal after mouse numbers surged across his family’s property. Reynolds estimates some areas held as many as 5000 mice per hectare.

His father, Terry Reynolds, found NextGen AgTech online, and Chick and another operator used two drones to distribute bait along programmed routes. Reynolds says the service cost less than half the aircraft option and the drones’ lower altitude appeared to give more consistent coverage.

The family later noticed greater crop damage in untreated areas. Reynolds says his family would use Chick’s services again and is considering whether drones could suit late spraying and bait spreading.

Chick says battery life and payload restrict efficiency on large broadacre properties, weather can ground flights and not every product may legally be applied from the air.

Commercial operators must also navigate aviation and chemical-use requirements. The Civil Aviation Safety Authority requires pilots to hold a Remote Pilot Licence, and businesses a Remote Operator’s Certificate. WA regulations prescribe training for people applying agricultural chemicals from piloted or remotely piloted aircraft, except for landowners on their own property.

Hulme says farmers only have a limited capacity to take on new technology. Cost, returns, compatibility, repairs and ongoing support all affect whether a new tool reaches the farm gate.

Farmers also look to neighbours and trusted advisers before committing, giving operators like Chick a role in demonstrating the technology.

“Extension leads to adoption and adoption leads to scale, and then scale leads to impact,” Hulme says.

The Society of Precision Agriculture Australia lists crop monitoring, weed detection, livestock inspection and targeted spraying among drone applications, alongside crop-stress alerts, yield estimates and farm maps.

The federal government’s drones.gov.au website estimates 10 per cent of Australian agricultural businesses use drones. It cites Deloitte Access Economics modelling that forecasts agricultural adoption reaching between 8300 and 23,900 units by 2040.

Chick expects mapping to become increasingly important. He is also exploring livestock monitoring and farm security, but he does not believe drones will replace the machinery already working across WA.

“They’re not here to replace the sprayers,” he says.

Instead, a drone can treat wet or inaccessible sections while conventional machinery covers larger areas. Chick calls it another tool in the toolbox, not a machine every farmer must own.

His willingness to experiment has included mistakes. Rushed mapping has caused small crashes into trees, teaching him to slow down and prepare properly.

“You don’t blame anyone else but yourself,” he says. “You just have to learn from it and slow down the next time.”

He is also open to jobs unrelated to farming. Chick was once hired to scatter a man’s ashes over the ocean by drone, a job that took weeks of council approval to arrange.

For now, Chick wants farmers to see the aircraft working, ask questions and decide whether it belongs in their operation. He says the technology may fly itself but getting it off the ground still depends on people.