Ag Drone Spraying in Macoupin County, IL for Corn, Soybeans and Wheat

Ag drone spraying prices in Macoupin County

Ag drone spraying in Macoupin County, IL is billed per acre, per pass, application only. Operators listed for the county quote $10–30 per acre, the Illinois typical rate is about $13, and Illinois operators interviewed in June 2026 charged $12–15. Our rates:

Service	Typical rate	Notes
Corn fungicide	from $12/acre	Tassel
Soybean fungicide or insecticide	from $12/acre	R3 passes
Rescue herbicide	from $13/acre	Where labeled for aerial use
Wheat fungicide	from $13/acre	Flag leaf to heading
Cover crop seeding	from $14/acre	Seed billed separately

Each visit has a $250 minimum. Product is billed separately. Quotes reflect acres per trip, water-supply lakes nearby and the spray volume on the label.

Corn and soybeans between Springfield and St. Louis

Macoupin County had 1,235 farms on 458,695 acres in the 2022 Census of Agriculture, averaging 371 acres, with sales up 88% to $444 million, 16th in Illinois. Net cash farm income reached $168.8 million.

Crop or livestock	2022
Soybeans	184,283 acres
Corn for grain	166,531 acres
Wheat	9,035 acres
Hay and forage	8,356 acres
Hogs	91,797 head
Cattle	24,562 head

Grain sales of $366.5 million ranked 14th in Illinois and 35th in the U.S. While 131 farms top 1,000 acres, more than half run under 180 acres, so ag drone spraying in Macoupin County covers big grain operations and many smaller fields. Only 242 acres are irrigated, and hogs ranked 19th in Illinois. The county covers 868 square miles and had 44,967 residents in 2020; Carlinville, Staunton, Brighton, Gillespie and Virden townships are the largest.

Carlinville Lake and atrazine

Illinois EPA lists Carlinville Lake as impaired for public water supply because of atrazine, and Carlinville draws its drinking water from surface water. Old and New Gillespie Lakes sit on the Dry Fork of Macoupin Creek, three to five miles northwest of Gillespie, and both reservoirs are flown with wide buffers on every side of the shoreline. A lake and watershed management plan has been prepared for Lake Carlinville. Operators map lakes, tributaries and waterways as no-spray zones, choose products and timing with the watershed in mind and fly only with wind blowing away from water.

Coal mines and subsidence

Coal shaped the county. Monterey Mine No. 1, five miles south of Carlinville and sold by ExxonMobil to Macoupin Energy in 2009, has been idled since March 2020, with options to transfer or seal it from 2027. In 2009, mine subsidence condemned the seven-year-old Benld Elementary School and displaced more than 700 students. A $4 million settlement over the school was approved in 2017, and Illinois runs a statutory Mine Subsidence Insurance Fund as reinsurer. Fields over old workings can settle and pond, and a drone treats them without driving across soft spots.

Wet prairie soils

Soils such as Herrick, a somewhat poorly drained loess soil with a spring water table one to two feet down, and Virden, a poorly drained soil formed under wet prairie that can pond, are common across this part of Illinois. Wet springs leave many fields too soft for a ground rig at planting and early post time; a drone makes the pass anyway.

Macoupin Creek and Beaver Dam State Park

Macoupin Creek rises in Montgomery County and runs about 100 miles to the Illinois River near Hardin, its lower stretch between bluffs up to 180 feet high. Beaver Dam State Park, 750 acres with a 59-acre lake about seven miles southwest of Carlinville, became a state park in 1947. Both are mapped as no-spray zones.

Miners' heritage

The Battle of Virden in 1898 and the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, with its 1936 monument to Mother Jones, mark the county's mining history; the cemetery joined the National Register in 1972. Farms and old mine towns still sit side by side along Route 4 from Carlinville through Gillespie, home to about 3,200 people, to Staunton, 21 miles to the south.

Field conditions

Field condition	Ground sprayer	Spray drone
Wet prairie soils in spring	Ruts, compaction	No soil contact
Corn at tassel	Crop damage	Flies above the canopy
Fields near water-supply lakes	Drift concerns	Mapped buffers
Soybeans at R3	Wheel-track losses	No crop contact

A Macoupin County spray season

Window	Typical drone work
May	Wheat fungicide
June	Rescue herbicide in corn and soybeans
Late July to August	Corn fungicide at tassel, soybean R3
Late August to September	Cover crops into standing crops

Illinois licensing

Drone applicators in Illinois hold an Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA) license through the Aerial General Standards exam plus category exams, and for-hire applicators file a certificate of insurance. The business holds an FAA Part 137 certificate with Part 107 pilots. Illinois Extension's Carlinville office, serving Christian, Jersey, Macoupin and Montgomery counties, posts local crop updates.