“It’s a simple economic equation. The biggest potential for Unmanned Aircraft Systems is aerial images and data acquisition. You can take a simple UAS and rewire imagery for a farmer’s field for cents on the dollar compared to using traditional aircraft. That’s the holy grail of aerodynamics,” said Rory Paul, CEO of Volt Aerial Robotics, a St. Louis-based company.
“Every farmer will benefit,” Paul said. UAS “will allow small farmers to [farm] economically and it will allow large farmers to acquire data when they want it.”
The market for agricultural UAS lies in the technology’s ability to provide farmers with a bird’s-eye view of their land. Historically, farmers have walked their land to survey it—looking for areas that need more fertilizer or water. More recently many have begun using small passenger planes to look at their lots from the air. But since airplane rental and fuel costs can quickly run into five figures, there’s strong demand for cheaper alternatives.
That’s where UAS come in. Weighing less than 50 pounds and often the size of a child’s toy-plane, agricultural UAS can drastically reduce the cost of land surveying. The price of a typical fully capable farming UAS is around $9,000, but it’s a onetime purchase that many say will easily pay for itself.
“Eighty percent of the utilization, once we are allowed to have Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the national airspace, in the first 10 years is going to be in precision agriculture,” said Michael Toscano, CEO of AUVSI. “You will have a situation where you can spray crops by a UAS that flies 2 or 3 feet above the plants. You can control the downwash because you can put the pesticides on the plants and not in the ground where it gets to the groundwater.”
“It sounds trivial but those numbers really add up a lot,” said Rory Paul of Volt Aerial Robotics. “If we could save farms 1 percent on inputs like herbicide and pesticide and increase their yields by 1 percent, you are looking at multibillion dollar savings.”
Robert Blair, the owner of a wheat, barley and cattle farm in Idaho that was established in 1903, says he uses his own UAS for multiple purposes, including providing proof for insurance claims.
“In 2008, reintroduction of wolves and a drought year caused elk and deer to congregate on my farm. It was $50,000 in damage and I was able to get reimbursed because I had documentation,” he said. “I had a visual view of what the damage was instead of just dots on the map.”
Blair built his own UAS, one a small rotor-plane, after purchasing a UAS years ago and feeling it wasn’t well equipped for his farm. Nowadays he maintains and flies his own UAS without the FAA’s permission, something he has so far gotten away with because of the remoteness of his land. Blair is unwavering in his support of UAS technology for farms and considers himself a national leader in promoting their use, even penning a blog called the Unmanned Farmer, in spite of U.S. regulations.
Idaho farmer Robert Blair says farmers are already feeling the competition from other countries that can freely use UAS technology. “Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, and Australia, they are some of our biggest competitors on the agriculture side and now we are playing catch up to them because the government on all levels doesn’t want to open up regulations [for UAS],” he said.
Japan is another country where UAS have found a permanent foothold among the rice paddies. The country has been utilizing UAS-like technology for its crops since 1990.
Proponents of UAS say now is the time to invest but are cognizant of the challenges drones will face among a population that views them as a threat.
“It’s a game-changing technology on par with the introduction of the horseless carriage or the computer,” Singer said. “It will create huge business opportunities but also huge policy, legal, and ethical questions that we will be wrestling with for decades.”
Source: The Daily Beast