Whether that investment pays off appears to depend on how the drone is used. Among adopters, 22% of those using drones for input application reported a profit increase of at least 5% (16% reported a moderate increase, 6% reported more than 10%), compared with 15% of imagery-only adopters (12% moderate, 3% over 10%). Losses were rare — only about 3% of adopters of either type reported a profit decline — but a large share of adopters simply didn’t know. Roughly 20% said they had no idea whether drones had changed their farm’s profitability, and that uncertainty was even more pronounced among nonadopters, nearly half of whom said they had no idea what impact drones would have.