Using Drones for Seeding Marginal Areas with Charlotte Crawley (DUCs)

Charlotte Crawley was raised on a mixed farming operation in Clanwilliam, MB. She received her Bachelor of Science in Animal Systems from the University of Manitoba in 2003 and headed to Alberta where she worked as a meat inspector at the Cargill plant in High River, followed by a two year position at Ballo Feeders feedlot.

Charlotte returned to the family farm in 2005 where she farmed full time for 8 years with her parents, farming 2500 acres, including forages, backgrounders, and cow/calf. Her parents retired from grain farming in 2014 and Charlotte continued to farm 3 quarters of pastureland and maintained a herd of 65 cow/calf pairs.

Her family was awarded with the Heritage Farm award in 2022, recognizing that the farm has remained in the same family for 125 years – this is one of Charlotte’s greatest accomplishments.

With her parent’s retirement in 2014, Charlotte sought off farm employment to help supplement her cattle addiction. She was fortunate enough to land a position as the farm manager for the inaugural season at MBFI. In this position she happened to hear of an opening with Ducks Unlimited Canada where they were looking for someone to establish forage on all newly purchased lands and to work with farmers to establish forages on their own lands.

Charlotte believes that sometimes the best things in life happen when you don’t expect them, and she jumped at the opportunity to join the DUC team.

Today, Charlotte oversees the Ducks Unlimited Canada forage and marginal areas programs, manages all forage restoration field activities on purchased lands, and assists with grazing management on DUC’s existing properties.

Cattle farmers are conservationists at their core, and Charlotte feels so fortunate that she can work for Ducks Unlimited Canada during the day and moonlight as a cattle farmer. Charlotte and her cows recently moved to Rapid City, where she lives and works on her partner’s cattle operation, where they run a hay and straw business, backgrounder operation, grassed yearlings, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 650 head cow/calf operation.

In this episode, we are discussing using drones to seed marginal areas, as the first episode in our mini series on Technology in Agriculture. This program took place in Manitoba and Saskatchewan in 2024 and 2025 through the Marginal Areas Program, Agriculture Demonstration of Practices and Technologies Program and the Fall Dormant Seeding Program. There is no cost to producers to seed using drones through these programs.

Charlotte describes what marginal areas are and some of the benefits to seeding these areas from the weed control and habitat enhancement lens. Further to that, we chat about the benefits and opportunities that arise through seeding these areas using drone technology.

We also discuss challenges that arise when using drones to seed, but in general, Charlotte sees the pros out weighing the challenges of seeding these areas with drones.

We wrap up with a discussion on programs that are available to producers for the 2026 season. To find out more, head over to the website below!

Website: www.ag.ducs.ca

The research programs and daily operations at MBFI would not be possible without the funding from the Province of Manitoba, Government of Canada, and Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, as well as the partnership with Manitoba Agriculture, Manitoba Beef Producers (MBP) and Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC).

We encourage you to follow MBFI on social media, or check out the website for more information on project findings and results, upcoming events and more!

Instagram: @MBBeefandForage

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Website: www.mbfi.ca

Email address: information@mbfi.ca

Mary-Jane’s Phone Number: 431-255-0011