AGRICULTURAL DRONES: Why a modern farmer needs a drone

Drones are becoming increasingly important in agriculture and in these modern days, more and more farmers are considering purchasing a drone. In fact, farmers are now turning to high-level drone technology that can provide them with fast and efficient solutions.

The agricultural industry is now embracing drone technology and using these advanced tools to transform the modern farming. The use of drone technology in agriculture is currently helping agricultural businesses meet the changing and growing demands of the future. Moreover, high-tech drones allow farmers, and the drone pilots that operate them, to increase efficiency in certain aspects of the farming process, from crop monitoring to planting, livestock management, crop spraying, irrigation mapping, and more.

According to a recent report by Markets and Markets, the agriculture drones market is expected to grow from US $1.2 billion by 2019 to US $4.8 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 31.4%. The pressure on global food supply due to growing world population and increase in venture funding for the development of agriculture drones are a few of the key factors driving the growth of this market.

Importance of drones in agriculture

The use of drones for precision agriculture continues to evolve as the industry matures, and new technology is introduced that help to accomplish difficult and time consuming tasks and at the same time reducing cost on agricultural activities. The evolution of drone software and its overall affordability also account for the increased application of drones. Let’s now explore how drones can be used for agriculture, more specifically.

Crop yield

According to Justin Cunningham, Hitec Commercial Solutions, LLC Drone Sales Manager, the value of drones in the agricultural industry is increasing exponentially. In the past, most farmers needed to use a full-scale aircraft which is extremely expensive and not an efficient use of time or money.

“Now, drones are able to quickly deploy when needed, provide higher quality data at a fraction of the cost and allow the farmer or land owner to grow with technology while improving crop yield,” he adds.

Remote sensing

Drones are helpful especially when it comes to determining crop yield and crop health in the form of NDVI imagery, in Africa, drones are used to monitor deforestation and locust swarm movements, disaster management, This is according to Mirjam Bäumer, Microdrones Marketing Manager.

With reference to Nikita Prokofev, Head of agriculture at Geoscan Ltd., nowadays, there are two main applications for remote sensing drones: land management and multispectral mapping for variable rate fertilization.

i. Land management

Land management is based on the measurement of each field border position and area. This is vital information for resource planning, because amount of seeds, fertilizers, water and employee’s workload depends strictly on the arable land area. Also at this stage elevation maps can be built which is very useful for water management. Variable rate application (VRA) is more complicated and requires compatible machinery such as sprayers and spreaders. VRA is a part of precision agriculture which has proven its efficiency multiple times in various conditions

and on different crops. The idea of this method is quite clear: fertilizers should be applied depending on the crop needs, and should not be applied at the zones where vegetation is non-viable or where there is no vegetation at all. So the task is to make the map of plant requirements, i.e. reveal vegetation zones.

Multispectral mapping

Justin Cunningham , says that, utilization of multi-spectral sensors gives the farmer the ability to target a specific area in their crop that may need particular attention, measure plant health, generate maps to provide prescribed health if needed and optimize efficiency of fields. The farmer can also use other sensors to quickly assess storm damage, identify any damage to the fencing or infrastructure, determine optimal foraging areas if they farm livestock, monitor livestock movements and customize surveillance of their property.

“Drones are easy-to-use tools for multispectral mapping. Obtained imagery is processed up to reflectance maps and then either vegetation indices or a composite map is built. This data is used at classification stage as an information of crop health or nitrogen deficiency. Eventually, prescription maps are exported and loaded in the field computer or controller installed at the tractor, sprayer, etc,” says Nikita Prokofev.

Crop Surveillance

Matthieu Lefebvre, Wingtra Sales and Business Development Manager argues that, drones can gather more detailed and complete information far more quickly and more cost effectively than satellites, manned aircraft or conventional ground survey methods. Overseas demand for clean, agricultural

products has never been higher and drones can maintain competitiveness despite high costs.

“Agricultural drones can provide farmers with immediate information about soils, plant health, growth rates, fertilizer requirements, weeds, pests and weather damage,” asserts Lefebvre.

Crop spraying

“The crop spraying drone technologies are advancing at a very rapid rate – making farming smarter and more efficient / cheaper,” says Tim Wise of PACSys (PTY) Ltd. “In some cases the drones are capable of more effective applications than the existing methods of application (knapsacks / tractors) thereby enhancing crop production and quality. This means more revenue for the growers and more food for the population,” he complements.

Field data collection

Matthew Davis, Drone Ops Manager at Aerobotics states that, drones are essential in agriculture as they can collect a lot more data points much faster than traditional farming practises. “Drones can cover large amounts of area and with our machine learning, we can provide farmers with actionable data within a couple days of the flight. The cameras that they carry also help offer valuable metrics that health, chlorophyll content, canopy area, tree counts, etc that help identify issues early on and help farmers track growth in their orchards,” he affirms.

What you should lookout for when buying a drone

Drones are accessible and relatively inexpensive, yet there are important things to take into account before implementing drone solutions. The steps involved in transforming your farm into a drone-enhanced agritech business include the following factors:

Flexibility

“The most important thing to consider is the flexibility needed with the aircraft. No