Dave

You are 100% correct on ag use. I think we all need to utilize our Farm Bureaus & ask them for rule-making help on this. We need an "ag exemption". If we're flying over our own fields for our own crop assessment reasons, there is no need that I see to comply with commercial regs (333). You stated you can fly an ultralight over your ground. Heck, a student pilot can fly a rented Cessna 150 over his corn field or anyone's corn field & circle it at 500', 1000', or whatever. He can mount a GoPro camera on the lift-strut & take pictures....just like a drone would. He can take his favorite Nikon medium range lens camera, hold it with one hand, and shoot away thru the window, or open the window, or remove the door in the case of some planes, and take pictures 'til he runs out of gas. That is legal. Unless something has changed very recently, a solo flight in a plane as I described does NOT require the student pilot to have passed his/her FAA written test. So, unlike the presenter's comments in the video, this student pilot may or may not have more understanding of airspace than a retired 747 driver that's lost his medical but is standing on the ground operating a Phantom 3 taking pictures of his newly acquired crop farm in Illinois.

We need an ag exemption. Maybe there needs to be other exemptions also, I don't know, but we need to be able to assess our own crops, if we wish. The exemption will still require you to operate within the upcoming rules (FAR Part 107), but be able to do it without commercial drone status.