(WCIA) — There’s a new start-up company making an appearance at the Farm Progress Show that a lot of people are paying attention to.

It’s called Rantizo, and its regional sales manager, Ben Etsinger, met up with WCIA 3’s Stu Ellis to show off some very special drone stuff.

“The buzz around the Rantizo name is drone custom application,” says Etsinger. “So, we are putting a 54-plus pound drone in the air and making liquid and dry applications on fields.”

WCIA: Liquid and dry applications of?

“On the dry application side, our focus is going to be granular fertilizer on the micronutrient side that is going to be put on at a lower use rate,” he says, “because we can’t carry obviously as much as a ground machine.

“We are also doing in-season cover crop seeding. On the liquid side, the variety is much greater. We can do anything from insecticides, fungicides, to foliar fertilizers, beneficial biologicals, your list is pretty endless as long as you’ve got an aerial label.”

WCIA: You are taking a drone, putting it out, and putting it on various spots that are already pre-identified?

“So there’s a lot of companies today that can give us an in-season image, and that might be taken with a drone or given to us via satellite,” says Etsinger, “and that in-season image might take a 60-acre field and identify 15% of the acres that there’s something wrong with it.

“It’s inefficient to drive a ground rig, x-amount of miles down the road, get into the field and potentially damage some crops while driving through it and only make an application in certain areas. With a drone, it makes a lot more sense.”

Here’s some sensible technology that’s going to be available at the Farm Progress Show. Etsinger will be there on Aug. 31, Sept. 1-2.