Precision Agriculture With Drone Technology

Precision Agriculture With Drone Technology

Precision Agriculture

Precision Agriculture (PA) is an approach to agricultural management that uses Computers and Information Technology (IT) to ensure that plants and soil receive exactly what they need for optimal health and productivity.

The goal of PA is to ensure economic, sustainable, and environmental protection.

Modern Agriculture Drones

Drones have certainly come a long way from being just playtoys.

With modern sensors and communication techniques, drones are able to communicate and integrate with mass drone systems more precisely.

This enables a level of communication and execution that is unmatched by traditional means.

The Importance of Drones in Agriculture

Drones collect raw data and convert it into useful information. Therefore, they can be used for various applications in drone farming, such as monitoring the following parameters:

• Crop health – Damage made by insects; color change due to pest infection
• Vegetation indices- Leaf area, anomaly detection, treatment effectiveness, phenology, yield
• Plant height – Plant height and density
• Plant scouting- Plant size, plot statistics, stand number, compromised plots, planter skips
• Water requirements – Water-stressed parts of the field/orchard in need of watering
• Soil analysis- Nutrient availability for plant nutrient management

Major Tasks Drones can Accomplish

Soil and field analysis:?The drone survey allows farmers to get information about their land’s soil conditions. Multispectral sensors capture data that may be used for seed planting patterns, field soil analysis, irrigation, and nitrogen control.

Planting:?Planting seeds is one of the latest and less common uses of drones in agriculture. Planting with drones can help you to reach areas that can be replanted without endangering workers.?

Crop spraying:?The use of drones to provide spray treatments is already common in some areas. Drone sprayers for agriculture can reach locations that are difficult to reach, like steep tea plantations at high heights.?

Crop monitoring:?The biggest challenge in farming is the size of the fields and the inefficiency of crop monitoring. Drones can provide precise field mapping including elevation information that allows growers to find any irregularities in the field.?

Irrigation:?Drones equipped with hyperspectral, multispectral, or thermal sensors can detect areas of a field that are dry or in need of improvement.

Health check:?Assessing crop health and spotting bacterial or fungal infestations on trees is critical.

Direct Benefits of Using Drones

• Enhanced Production – The farmer can enhance production capabilities through comprehensive irrigation planning, adequate monitoring of crop health, increased knowledge about soil health, and adaptation to environmental changes.
• Effective and Adaptive Techniques – Drone use allows farmers to receive regular information on their crops and aids in the development of more effective agricultural practices.
• Greater safety of farmers – Using drones to spray pesticides in difficult-to-reach terrains, contaminated areas, higher crops, and power lines is safer and more convenient for farmers.
• Faster data for quick decision-making – Drone surveys provide farmers with reliable data processing, allowing them to make quick and deliberate judgments without second-guessing, saving time spent on crop scouting.
• Less wastage of resources – Drones in agriculture enable optimum usage of all resources such as fertilizer, water, seeds, and pesticides.
• 99% Accuracy rate – The drone survey helps farmers calculate the exact land size, segment the various crops, and indulge in soil mapping.
• Useful for Insurance claims – Farmers utilize the data collected by drones to file crop insurance claims in the event of damage. While being insured, they even analyze the risks and losses linked with the land.
• Evidence for insurance companies – Agricultural drones are used by agricultural insurance companies for efficient and reliable data. They document the damage that has happened to calculate the appropriate monetary compensation for the farmers.

Conclusion

Drones are becoming the backbone of many large-scale agriculture corporations.

Without Drones, their business would cease to exist and wouldn't bring them the same ROI that they enjoy with using drones.

Drones offer efficient use of the existing agricultural resources for maximum production output while using substantially less manpower, resources, and investment.

In short, Drones are the future

You can either embrace this fact and grow with it or stay behind and watch your business vanish. It's the Apple and Blackberry moment all over again.

I'm already doing my part and staying ahead of it with my company GeoDrones. Where we have the latest drones that technology has to offer and cutting-edge sensors to deliver an unmatched level of data and information.

With a talented and certified team, we have already overcome numerous challenges and completed many projects.

We are ready and geared up for the future

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