Publishing Imprint
Black Swamp Press
Practical, honest books for people who work with their hands and their minds. Based in Beavercreek, Ohio.
Practical, honest books for people who work with their hands and their minds. Based in Beavercreek, Ohio.
A Midwest Farmer's Guide to Seeing What Your Eyes Simply Can't
This book is not a tech manual written by someone who's never had dirt under their fingernails. It's not a sales pitch from a drone company. And it's not an academic textbook that explains the physics of light in language that makes your eyes glaze over.
This is a straight-talking, practical guide for working farmers who want to know one thing: can a drone actually save me money and help me make better decisions on my operation?
The honest answer is: for most Midwest row crop operations above a couple hundred acres, yes. But not in the way the marketing brochures suggest, and not without understanding what you're looking at.
Drone remote sensing isn't just for big operations anymore. For most Midwest row crop farms above a couple hundred acres, a $1,500 drone can pay for itself in a single growing season — by catching problems early, targeting inputs, and making better decisions.
Whether you're flying your first mission or evaluating whether to add multispectral to a season already in motion, this book gives you the real-world knowledge and step-by-step guidance to put a drone to work for maximum benefit to your farming operation.
Chapters 1–3 · Before you spend a dollar
Chapter 1: What 30 Years of Walking Your Fields Taught You
Chapter 2: The $1,500 Entry Point
Chapter 3: The Legal Stuff — FAA Rules Every Farm Operator Must Know
Chapters 4–7 · How plants talk through light
Chapter 4: Light, Color, and What Your Crops Are Telling You
Chapter 5: Vegetation Indices — The Math That Does the Thinking
Chapter 6: Cameras — RGB and Multispectral
Chapter 7: The Multispectral Investment Decision
Chapters 8–11 · Practical flying
Chapter 8: Flight Planning for the Real World
Chapter 9: Turning Flights Into Maps
Chapter 10: Reading Your Maps — Patterns, Problems, and Priorities
Chapter 11: Your First Season — A 12-Week Action Plan
Chapters 12–16 · Data to decisions
Chapter 12: Nitrogen Management — Seeing Deficiency Early
Chapter 13: Scouting, Stand Counts, and Early Season Decisions
Chapter 14: In-Season Crop Health Monitoring
Chapter 15: Disease and Pest Detection
Chapter 16: Variable-Rate Prescriptions
Chapters 17–19 · Running a drone program
Chapter 17: Working With Service Providers
Chapter 18: Integrating Drones Into Your Existing System
Chapter 19: Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
Plus: Epilogue · Appendixes A–I · Bibliography · Index · About the Author
About the Author
Adam Miller grew up in Napoleon, Ohio, in the heart of northwest Ohio farm country. He spent twenty years in the United States Air Force as a geospatial intelligence analyst — working with the same multispectral, thermal, and electro-optical sensors that agricultural drones are built on.
He wrote this book to bridge the gap between drone technology and the farmers who could benefit from it — but who have been underserved by technical manuals and sales materials that don't speak their language.
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