Bestway Ag | Hopkinsville company helps farmers ‘get it done’
THROUGHOUT HISTORY, farmers have looked for the best ways to cultivate healthier crops and achieve greater productivity.
For decades, Hopkinsville-based company Bestway Ag, served by Pennyrile Electric, has played a major role in a significant area of innovation: the agricultural sprayers that help farmers control pests, weeds and disease while encouraging growth.
The business is a leading manufacturer and marketer of ag spraying and liquid handling equipment, auto boom height controls that maintain accuracy and consistent applications, and specialized ag logistics equipment.
“We do everything from small sprayers like you would use in your lawn and garden all the way up to the largest agricultural models,” explains Danny Vowell, Bestway Ag’s marketing manager.
“Everything we do is geared toward helping the farmers get it done,” Vowell says. “We like to say, ‘get it done the best way.’”
The focus on innovation and customization primed Bestway to recognize early on the capabilities of drones for agricultural tasks, such as seeding cover crop and dispensing fish pellets in ponds.
“Within the last two years, we have become one of the top distributors in the United States for agricultural drones,” Vowell says. “We captured a huge portion of the market share very, very quickly.”
Headquartered in Hopkinsville, Bestway also operates locations in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Kansas.
Drones to the rescue
When victims of Hurricane Helene became stranded in the mountains of North Carolina, Jeff Clack says he felt “a little bit of divine communication” to use drones to help them.
Clack heads drone teams at Bestway Ag, a leading distributor of drones used in agriculture.
Aware the company had just received several specialized heavy-lift drones, “I just knew we had to deploy these drones to help people survive,” Clack recalls, “and to get comfort and hope.”
Within hours of the catastrophe, workers in Hopkinsville prepared the drones while a pilot made his way from Wisconsin to pick up the drone trailer and rendezvous with Clack and an Alabama-based pilot in North Carolina.
“We coordinated our air assets with air bosses at emergency operation centers and emergency management teams, because we wanted to do this 100% by the book,” the Air Force veteran explains.
Using thermal imaging, the drone team located survivors in the overnight hours while volunteer pilots airlifted special batteries from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to power the heavy-lift operations.
The drone team improvised a system using contractor-grade garbage bags to deliver the essentials, such as ready-to-eat meals and cases of water. Among the most critical airlifts was baby formula to a new mother who was dehydrated and not able to breastfeed.
Using a loudspeaker with pre-recorded messages, “we asked them ‘yes and no’ questions and looked at them through the drone camera,” Clack says. “They gave us thumbs up or thumbs down.
“The main message that we wanted them to know is they have not been forgotten.”
