FEATURE
AGRICULTURAL DRONES: Why a modern farmer needs a drone
D
rones 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.
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Africa Surveyors News l 2020
Importance of drones in agriculture
Remote sensing
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.
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.
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.
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
May-June issue l 2020
