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Drones Are Revolutionizing Agriculture
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—better known as drones—have been used commercially since the early 1980s. Today, however, practical applications for drones are expanding faster than ever in a variety of industries, thanks to robust investments and the relaxing of some regulations governing their use. Responding to the rapidly evolving technology, companies are creating new business and operating models for UAVs.
The total addressable value of drone-powered solutions in all applicable industries is significant—more than $127 billion, according to a recent PwC analysis. Among the most promising areas is agriculture, where drones offer the potential for addressing several major challenges. With the world’s population projected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, experts expect agricultural consumption to increase by nearly 70 percent over the same time period. In addition, extreme weather events are on the rise, creating additional obstacles to productivity.
Agricultural producers must embrace revolutionary strategies for producing food, increasing productivity, and making sustainability a priority. Drones are part of the solution, along with closer collaboration between governments, technology leaders, and industry.
Six Options for Agricultural Drones
Drone technology will give the agriculture industry a high-technology makeover, with planning and strategy based on real-time data gathering and processing. PwC estimates the market for drone-powered solutions in agriculture at $32.4 billion. Following are six ways aerial and ground-based drones will be used throughout the crop cycle:
1. Soil and field analysis: Drones can be instrumental at the start of the crop cycle. They produce precise 3-D maps for early soil analysis, useful in planning seed planting patterns. After planting, drone-driven soil analysis provides data for irrigation and nitrogen-level management.
2. Planting: Startups have created drone-planting systems that achieve an uptake rate of 75 percent and decrease planting costs by 85 percent. These systems shoot pods with seeds and plant nutrients into the soil, providing the plant all the nutrients necessary to sustain life.
3. Crop spraying: Distance-measuring equipment—ultrasonic echoing and lasers such as those used in the light-detection and ranging, or LiDAR, method—enables a drone to adjust altitude as the topography and geography vary, and thus avoid collisions. Consequently, drones can scan the ground and spray the correct amount of liquid, modulating distance from the ground and spraying in real time for even coverage. The result: increased efficiency with a reduction of in the amount of chemicals penetrating into groundwater. In fact, experts estimate that aerial spraying can be completed up to five times faster with drones than with traditional machinery.
4. Crop monitoring: Vast fields and low efficiency in crop monitoring together create farming’s largest obstacle. Monitoring challenges are exacerbated by increasingly unpredictable weather conditions, which drive risk and field maintenance costs. Previously, satellite imagery offered the most advanced form of monitoring. But there were drawbacks. Images had to be ordered in advance, could be taken only once a day, and were imprecise. Further, services were extremely costly and the images’ quality typically suffered on certain days. Today, time-series animations can show the precise development of a crop and reveal production inefficiencies, enabling better crop management.
5. Irrigation: Drones with hyperspectral, multispectral, or thermal sensors can identify which parts of a field are dry or need improvements. Additionally, once the crop is growing, drones allow the calculation of the vegetation index, which describes the relative density and health of the crop, and show the heat signature, the amount of energy or heat the crop emits.
6. Health assessment: It’s essential to assess crop health and spot bacterial or fungal infections on trees. By scanning a crop using both visible and near-infrared light, drone-carried devices can identify which plants reflect different amounts of green light and NIR light. This information can produce multispectral images that track changes in plants and indicate their health. A speedy response can save an entire orchard. In addition, as soon as a sickness is discovered, farmers can apply and monitor remedies more precisely. These two possibilities increase a plant’s ability to overcome disease. And in the case of crop failure, the farmer will be able to document losses more efficiently for insurance claims.
What’s Next?
Looking further into the future, UAVs might involve fleets, or swarms, of autonomous drones that could tackle agricultural monitoring tasks collectively, as well as hybrid aerial-ground drone actors that could collect data and perform a variety of other tasks.
So, what’s slowing the progress of drones in agriculture? Beyond the barriers to widespread drone adoption in all industries—safety of drone operations, privacy issues, and insurance-coverage questions—the biggest agricultural concern is the type and quality of data that can be captured. To address this, the industry will push for more sophisticated sensors and cameras, as well as look to develop drones that require minimal training and are highly automated.
For more on drones in agriculture and seven other industries, see PwC’s comprehensive report.
Michal Mazur is a partner in PwC’s Drone-Powered Solutions division, @PwCDrone, based in Poland.
11 Comments on "Drones Are Revolutionizing Agriculture"
Go Speed Racer on Thu, 21st Jul 2016 7:31 pm
The drone needs a satellite internet connection, to report the crop planting data back to Monsanto headquarters.
The rest of us can buy organic.
Sissyfuss on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 12:07 am
Yes GSR, and if the drone spots a farmer trying to hoard Monsanto seeds for next years’ crop, they will be immediately vaporized by a laser death ray.
meld on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 4:04 am
Why do I need this when I’ve just grown courgettes, peas, runner beans, nasturtiums, winter squash and tomatoes in a large polyculture with zero digging, my own urine as liquid fertiliser and no pesticides or slug pellets. People are f**king stupid.
JuanP on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 8:36 am
I was really surprised when I went back home a couple of years ago by the fact that many farmers had UAVs and those that didn’t were thinking of buying one. They are becoming very popular even in less overdeveloped countries.
Meanwhile, I am on my way to the garden to use some manual tools and muscle power to turn the compost piles, apply some worm castings tea, pull some weeds, and pick my daily harvest. 😉
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 9:30 am
I am about to start a small worm farm, anything that can help heal dead soil will be worth its weight in gold in coming years IMHO.
Meld you just made me realize I have a very limited diet, I am going to need to google 2 of your plants.
Davy on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 9:55 am
Drones could definitely be an advantage for monitoring. I had a 1000 acre corn and soy farm 16 years ago for 4 years. Being able to monitor what is going on from the air regularly is a plus. I was a private pilot back then so I would fly over the farm when I had time. I eventually ran out of time to do anything fun like that because I was so busy with the many other things related to the farm and hold down my other job.
I have a permaculture goat and cattle operation now. If this was a commercial operation it would be an advantage to monitor the herd and locate strays. As it is now there is no need and to play with a drone is a waste of my precious time. The rest of the things mentioned in the article are very niche related. Farming is a low profit endeavor unless you are big and connected both vertical and horizontal. IOW you have to do allot of things in a lot of related activities. It means maybe specializing in a few things and having many other related activities as support. It is like here in the poor Ozarks of Missouri. You have to do several things to make a living.
Drones are not going to be cost effective for most operations except for the really low cost ones used for monitoring. Seeding, spraying, and other high tech may fit in to someone who will specialize in that activity and service multiple farms but for the most part I do not see widespread applications of drones. The same is true across other industries. I would go further to say self-driving cars are a dead end. All these fanciful technologies are dead ends and useless in the bigger picture of a collapsing global economy.
The economy is in decay and deflation. It is not bad enough yet to pressure new tech from general business collapse but this is in the pipeline. All these glitzy shinny glorified toys will be ending soon and the people that specialize in them out of a job. The future is to low tech, slow travel and human/animal labor. The future will be most of us that survive trying to grow food by hand in small plots. Best to get started now.
GregT on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 10:02 am
“I am about to start a small worm farm”
Better get it up and running soon Practical, before Monsanto acquires the patent for worms…….
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 10:36 am
Haha, yeah, I wonder if they can even make round up ready worms, they cant master super rice. Probably cant make beneficial invertebrates survive in that toxin.
The word farm is an exageration of my time and ambition right now, more like one worm compost bin…..
PracticalMaina on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 11:57 am
Proof pesticides kill!!! A few sweet treats laden with pesticides and dozens dead in Pakistan.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/05/06/he-wanted-to-teach-him-a-lesson-revenge-by-a-brother-in-pakistan-allegedly-leads-to-31-deaths-from-poisoned-sweets/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_1_na
Apneaman on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 5:48 pm
Gross Algae Bloom Engulfs a Lake Full of Human Shit
“We’re in the dog days of summer, which means disgusting algae blooms are cropping up across polluted and poorly managed waterways all over the United States. The latest slime-covered coastline to grab national headlines? Utah Lake, and it seems that actual human shit is to blame.
This stunning time-lapse video shows an algae bloom seeping into Utah Lake late last week, turning the popular boating destination a sickly shade of green. The bloom is being fueled by a mixture of high heat, calm conditions, and phosphorus-loaded runoff from eight nearby wastewater treatment plants. In other words, it’s from our toilets.
We’re in the dog days of summer, which means disgusting algae blooms are cropping up across polluted and poorly managed waterways all over the United States. The latest slime-covered coastline to grab national headlines? Utah Lake, and it seems that actual human shit is to blame.”
http://gizmodo.com/gross-algae-bloom-engulfs-a-lake-full-of-human-shit-1784141317
JuanP on Fri, 22nd Jul 2016 8:26 pm
Practical, For indoor use I recommend the Worm Factory 360, an upward migration system. I have two of them, one in my balcony and another one in my guest bathroom shower which is never used for showering. They are the easiest to use, harvest, and clean. In a garage or shed, cheaper plastic totes will do just fine. Outdoors, horizontal migration systems are best, preferably made of concrete and bricks or blocks, but they can be made out of wood, too. You can use free pallets to build some very good outdoor worm farms for nothing.