Dispelling Drone Myths: How drones are transforming the world of agriculture
David: Hey everybody, welcome to the Aerial Influence channel. I'm David Plummer, this is Michael Ferguson. All we do all day long is talk about drones. Today, episode number five of our series Dispelling Drone Myths, we're going to talk about how drones are transforming the world of agriculture.
Michael, we work a lot with farming, with agriculture clients. You've really been sort of the one pushing that and you've really been the one that's dug into it. So tell us a little bit...how do you think drones are really kind of going to transform that industry?
Michael: Yeah, I mean obviously we're from Indiana, we're corn country, that kind of thing. Not farmers, but we're drone people, we see the value. And one of the things that I saw was all of the drones that we basically are carrying, you know, for search and rescue and everything, I see that they could have a place on the farm. There's some great ways, you know, you've got larger drones like the Agras series where you can do spraying and you can do spreading. Spreading, which would be something like cover crops. And where that could be highly beneficial is if you've got five foot corn, you obviously don't want to trample that corn because it's not ready to be harvested, but the best time to put in a cover crop is when it's about, you know, yay high. You can do that really easily with a drone and start that process of clover to help provide the nutrients back into the soil as you're finishing off the corn growth and harvest.
Spraying, obviously you can go to spot spraying. There's ways to take multiple drones, control them with one remote...
David: You have to have special waivers for that kind of stuff too…
Michael: ...yeah, you know we’re not quite there yet, but we are at the same time. At this point it's kind of like how do you want to get started in this stuff? There's multispectral where you can basically see if there's crop stresses, you can tell the health of the crops that way and then get boots on the ground. Okay, we see something is wrong here. Is it nitrogen? You know, something like that. Or is it water, you know, dry, whatever.
Then you have just scouting in general. You've got it all the way on the insurance side, you've got wind damage and you've got to figure out, OK, is this corn tipped over to the right degree where it warrants a payout for the farmer because of the wind damage. You know, you can get really specific. Okay, this area, this area, this area gives that information.
One of the reasons I got into it because I realized it was kind of difficult is that when you talk about crop spraying, crop dusters, whether it's helicopter, the air tractors, everything is geared towards manned aviation because that's how it's been for the last hundred years.
David: But it’s important to note, we don't see the Agras replacing crop dusters...aerial applicators are still going to have a major place in this country.
Michael: Yeah. I mean, I think the last figures were for all of the crops that are grown, about 25% of that I believe is crop dusters are spraying and dusting.
So going back to the fact that everything is kind of geared towards manned aviation, fast forward to where we are right now and we've got drones. So obviously there's nobody riding on the top of the drone, but the FAA still has to worry about safety. And a drone, yes, you're taking that person out of the drone. So that's safer for the operator. But is it safer for the public? And when you put in all of these things like GPS and RTK and geo-fencing, all that kind of stuff, then the answer is yes. You've got a battery operated drone versus a combustion engine, so if anything goes down, that thing isn't going to go down, hit the ground and go in a ball of fire. Or it's not going to spew out a bunch of pesticide. So that is enough evidence for the FAA to basically warrant...Yes, you can get these exemptions. It is a process. That's what we're here for.
David: And how long was the process? I mean, we went through the process.
Michael: After you write the exemption and all that kind of stuff, you're looking at anywhere from 90 to 120 days. So this thing gets sent to Washington, you get it signed off, that kind of thing. It comes back. Then you have to hook up with your local FAA around here. If you're serious about it, and you really want to introduce this kind of technology now because there's no better time to do it than now, you're in for a process. But it's highly doable.
David: And once you get it done, it's done.
Drones are our future, and we want to be here as a resource for you, so subscribe to our emails to get the latest drone knowledge.
Michael: As always, thank you for reading. We're excited to share the future of drones with you.