6 Ways Drones are Radically Improving the Agriculture Industry

by Ron Poul Writer

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, have been around since the 1980’s. But until recently, drones for agriculture weren’t allowed due to strict regulatory environments. Now that regulatory rules on drones are relaxing, the market is quickly expanding at rapid speed.

Farming is one of the most promising industries to benefit from drone technology as precision agriculture drones can help companies address several major challenges. The world’s population is growing steadily with food consumption expected to increase nearly 70% by 2050. Not to mention, producers are facing the more challenges due to unstable weather patterns.

Agricultural companies need to embrace innovative technologies to increase productivity, produce quality food, and keep production sustainable. The good news? Drones can be part of the precision farming solution.

The following are six ways drones can be used in air or by ground throughout the crop cycle.

1. Analyzing the Soil and Field

Drones can produce 3D maps and are instrumental at the beginning of a crop cycle. Maps perform an early soil analysis to know how to plan patterns for seed planting. After the seeds are planted, soil analysis can offer data for nitrogen-level management and irrigation.

2. Efficient Planting Methods

New, innovative technologies allow for drone-planting systems to shoot pods with plant nutrients and seeds into the ground. This offers plants all they need to sustain a healthy life. Drone-planting systems can support an uptake rate of 75% while slashing planting costs by 85%. These are significant savings for agricultural producers.

3. Pinpointed Crop Spraying

Precision agriculture drones can scan the ground and spray only the amount of liquid a crop needs. It can modulate distance from the ground for even spraying and use ultrasonic echoing and lasers to avoid collisions. This results in greater efficiencies in crop spraying while reducing the amount of chemicals reaching ground water. Some experts say aerial crop spraying is five times faster than using traditional machinery.

4. Advanced Crop Monitoring

Perhaps one of the largest obstacles farmers face is monitoring large-scale operations. This is made worse by increasingly unpredictable weather patterns which can drive risk and maintenance costs. Earlier satellite imagery technologies offered some help but had drawbacks with being expensive and not as precise. Today’s drones for agriculture can reveal the complete development of a crop including production inefficiencies to enable better crop management.

5. Irrigation Alerts

Drone technology with thermal sensors can tell you which areas of a field are dry or need more irrigation. In addition, as the crop grows, precision agriculture drones calculate the vegetation index. This tells you the health of the crop by showing its heat signature and the amount of energy or heat the crop is emitting.

6. Disease Assessment

Catching disease or fungal infections on trees in the early stages is essential for healthy crops. Agriculture drones can scan a crop using visible and near-infrared light to identify which plants reflect different amounts of light. The drones produce multispectral images to track the plant’s health and notice any changes. As soon as disease or sickness is discovered, farmers are quickly alerted so they can apply remedies and monitor the results. These precision farming methods increase a plant’s chance of survival in overcoming diseases. If crops fail, farmers can easily document losses for insurance claims.

Curious how precision agriculture drones could help improve precision farming in your business? Explore drones for agriculture on the internet.