Ag Drone Services in Lancaster County, NE for Corn, Soybeans and Acreages

Ag drone service prices in Lancaster County

Ag drone services in Lancaster County, NE are billed per acre, per pass, application only. Nebraska drone rates run about $8–22 per acre, with $13 typical, and operators in Lincoln quote $13–17. Our rates:

Service	Typical rate	Notes
Corn and soybean fungicide	from $13/acre	Tassel corn, R3 soybeans
Rescue herbicide	from $13/acre	Where labeled for aerial use
Insecticide	from $13/acre	Japanese beetle, gall midge edges
Acreage and pasture weeds	from $14/acre	Thistles, sericea lespedeza
Cover crop seeding	from $16/acre	Seed billed separately

Each visit has a $250 minimum. Product is billed separately. Quotes reflect acres per trip, homes and wetlands nearby, airspace and the spray volume on the label.

Corn and soybeans around a city

Lancaster County had 1,771 farms on 407,381 acres in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, with $264.3 million in sales, 77% from crops.

Crop or livestock	2022
Soybeans	151,428 acres
Corn for grain	149,209 acres
Hay and forage	25,171 acres
Broilers	520,708
Cattle	24,796 head
Hogs	9,130 head

The county ranked 26th in Nebraska for crop sales and 28th for grains and oilseeds. It is also home to about 322,600 people, nearly 291,000 of them in Lincoln.

Acreages and the urban edge

More than half of Lancaster County's farms are under 50 acres: 194 run 1–9 acres and 741 run 10–49, while 114 top 1,000 acres. Acreage owners around Waverly, Hickman, Bennet and Firth often need a few acres of thistles or pasture weeds treated, right next to homes and gardens. Operators map houses, gardens and windbreaks as no-spray zones, fly only with wind blowing away from them, and neighbors can group jobs to share a trip.

Saline wetlands and the Salt Creek tiger beetle

The Salt Creek tiger beetle, federally endangered since 2005, lives only in the saline wetlands of northern Lancaster County along Salt Creek, its tributaries and Arbor Lake. About 1,110 acres were designated critical habitat in 2014, and surveys have counted only a few hundred adults. Pesticides are among the listed threats. Fields near these wetlands get wide buffers, careful product choice and flights only with wind blowing away from the habitat.

Lower Platte South NRD nitrate areas

The Lower Platte South Natural Resources District covers Lancaster and parts of five other counties, and the whole district is at least Phase I for groundwater. Phase II starts when at least half of sampled wells reach 5 ppm nitrate, and growers in Phase II and III areas need nitrogen certification training. Davey and Hickman have been Phase II areas, and Sprague exceeded the trigger in 2025. Split, in-season nitrogen by drone fits those plans without wheel tracks. In 2025 the district tested 101 wells for pesticides and found none, and it renewed 22 chemigation permits with no violations.

County noxious weed rules

The Lancaster County Weed Control Authority enforces 11 noxious weeds, including musk, Canada and plumeless thistle, sericea lespedeza, leafy spurge, phragmites and purple loosestrife. Owners get a 10-day notice to control them; if they don't, the county hires a contractor and bills the owner, and unpaid bills become a lien. A drone can treat thistle patches and pasture edges quickly once a notice arrives.

Gall midge and Japanese beetle

Soybean gall midge has been found in 66 counties across Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota, with the worst damage at field edges next to grass waterways and ditches. Nebraska's first Japanese beetle report in field crops came from a soybean field near Crete, just west of the county. UNL thresholds for Japanese beetle are three or more beetles per ear at silking in corn and more than 20% defoliation in reproductive soybeans. Edge passes cover the hot spots.

Prairies and Salt Valley lakes

Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center near Denton protects about 800 acres of tallgrass prairie, and UNL's Nine-Mile Prairie northwest of Lincoln covers about 230 acres that were mostly never plowed. The Salt Valley's roughly 25 lakes, including Branched Oak, Pawnee and Conestoga, cover about 4,400 water acres, and state recreation areas require a Game and Parks permit for drone flights. All are mapped as no-spray zones.

A Lancaster County spray season

Window	Typical drone work
April to May	Musk thistle rosettes on acreages and pasture
June	Rescue herbicide, in-season nitrogen
July	Japanese beetle and gall midge edge passes
Late July to August	Corn fungicide at tassel, soybean R3
Late August to September	Cover crops into standing crops

Licensing and Lincoln airspace

In Nebraska, a drone application is an aerial application and the pilot is the applicator. The Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) requires Category 12 Aerial with General Standards for restricted-use products and an aerial pesticide business license for hire, and only products labeled for aerial use may go on. Lincoln Airport, about five miles northwest of downtown, has a 12,901-foot runway and hosts Nebraska National Guard units, so fields in its controlled airspace need FAA authorization before every flight.