Brazilian Hi-Tech Ag UAV Operator Signs Deal with Traditional Ag Aviation Company

Ulf Botgawa and Julio Kampf

The drone market for agriculture should receive a strengthening in Brazil of an industry that in other countries is seen as its competitor: agricultural aviation. This is what indicates the partnership signed on Wednesday (8) between the company Terra Aviação Agrícola, of Cachoeira do Sul, RS, Brazil and SkyAgri, which is the agricultural service arm of south Brazilian´s SkyDrones company, manufacturer and distributor of high- technology UAVs.

The partnership, unprecedented in Brazil (and probably in the world) was signed during the Congress of Agricultural Aviation of Brazil (SINDAG), which has ended august 9th after receiving 89 expositors and 2100 visitors. The possibilities of incorporating drones into the fleets of airplanes were also presented in a SkyAgri speech on Wednesday evening to businessmen present at the Congress.

Through the partnership, Terra Aviação will incorporate unmanned aircraft (with equipment and technologies provided by SkyAgri) to its fleet of four aircraft, which serve rice fields in Rio Grande do Sul and soybeans in Mato Grosso do Sul. This should represent both the reinforcement in the comprehensiveness and precision of an activity already offered by the company (aerial spraying) and the inclusion of a new niche in the scope of missions (survey by images). This is also a excellent opportunity for the drone part, a field with so much to grow, considering that Brazil has one of the largest agricultural aviation markets in the world (losing only to the US market).

For Agricultural Aviation operators, this means incorporating the ability to detect (with multispectral imaging drone) specific problems in crops – whether it be a pest attack or a nutrient failure in the soil, as well as solving it more precisely – by applying chemicals or biologic agents exactly where it is needed, by plane or by spray drones.

In the case of the imaging survey, according to SkyAgri / SkyDrones CEO Ulf Bogawa, the opportunities are even broader.

“Even in services for agricultural insurance or future commodity markets, where often the producer or investor needs images (information) to estimate harvest volumes,” he explains. In this case, we can even count healthy plants.

According to the managing director of Terra Aviação Agrícola and president of the Brazilian National Union of Agricultural Aviation Companies (Sindag), Júlio Augusto Kämpf, besides the capacity for monitoring and complementing areas sprayed by airplanes, the novelty should represent greater safety in the field. “The tendency is that this technology will replace at least a good part of the manual costal sprayers (there are more than 900 thousand in the country, according to Ibge.”

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The partnership between the Agricultural Aviation Company and the drone manufacturer was done in a franchise structure, which SkyAgri expects to multiply throughout the country. Basically, the manufacturer provides packages of equipment and technologies according to the demand in each region, trains the partner company operators and guaranties technical support. The partner also has the option of renting extra equipment, in the case of sporadic missions that are beyond the contracted capacity.

SkyDrones, who was founded in 2008, has spun off his Agricultural Service company SkyAgri in January 2018. SkyDrones operates in the B2B segment, providing UAV solutions for various sectors of the market and is certified in many agricultural managing platforms like Bayer (now BASF) Digital Farming and Monsanto Climate FieldView among others. Besides the civil market, SkyDrones was certified at the beginning of this year by the Brazilian Ministry of Defense as a Strategic Defense Company. In June this year, SkyAgri presented its business case, invited by AeroVironment, at the Nasdaq Investor and Analyst Event in New York. SkyAgri is looking for investors to scale up its franchising operation and expansion. The Brazilian company also has partnerships with manufacturers and technology developers from the United States, China, Germany and several other countries.

Source: Brazilian National Union of Agricultural Aviation Companies (Sindag)