Agriculture

As the farming season starts in the US, the National Agricultural Aviation Association (NAAA) is urging drone operators to be extra careful near low-flying crewed agricultural aircraft. The safety of ag aviators is crucial because they help farmers on over 127 million acres of land to increase productivity and protect crops.

The DJI Agras T50 and Agras T25 agriculture drones are now available for purchase in the US and other international markets. Building on the popular Agras drone line, the T50 is built for larger-scale growing operations while the lightweight T25 is designed to be more portable for smaller fields. Both drones are compatible with the DJI SmartFarm app which has been upgraded for comprehensive aerial application management.

Iowa-based agriculture spray drone service provider Rantizo has launched new software that makes it easier for operators to manage jobs, gather billing information, and collect compliance data.

Guardian Agriculture, a manufacturer of electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) drone systems for sustainable farming, says it has started operating on behalf of customers in the Salinas Valley region of California. With this, Guardian has become the first US-based agri eVTOL drone maker to begin commercial operations. The company reportedly has more than $100 million in customer orders at the moment.

Iowa-based agriculture spray drone service provider Rantizo says it has raised more than $6 million in an oversubscribed Series A financing round. The funding was led by Leaps by Bayer and included investors Fulcrum Global Capital and Innova Memphis.

Terra Drone Corporation, one of the top drone service providers in the world, has started offering agricultural spraying services in Southeast Asia. The company has scooped up precision agriculture tech from Indonesian startup Avirtech and established a new entity called Terra Drone Agri to cater primarily to palm plantations.

It’s been only a decade since the world’s largest consumer drone maker DJI expanded into the precision farming sector. But by the end of 2022, the global number of DJI agriculture drones in operation had already crossed 200,000 units, with the cumulative farming area under them exceeding 200 million hectares.

California maker of large-scale special purpose Pelican drones, Pyka, has received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to operate its highly automated agricultural UAV for crop spraying missions – an achievement that may facilitate the company’s planned deployment of its cargo delivery craft as well. 

AgEagle Aerial Systems has added a new product to the MicaSense series of drone sensors. The company’s latest offering, RedEdge-P dual, is a high-resolution multispectral and RGB composite sensor that allows DJI operators to use their drones for plant classification, weed identification, environmental research and conservation, and vegetation analysis of water bodies.

Diageo, the producer of Don Julio and Casamigos tequilas, says it is using drones to upskill agave farmers for the future of the ever-growing tequila industry. Agave plants are the key ingredient in making tequila.

Buzz it, and they will come – the cops, that is. State lawmakers in Iowa have introduced legislation that calls for creating fines and potential prison sentences for pilots who fly their drones within 400 feet of farms raising livestock.

Drone maker XAG says the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has given operational authorization to its agricultural spraying aircraft P40 and V40. This is the first time drone spraying and spreading has been legalized for use on UK farms.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has granted a Part 107 waiver allowing drones to fly beyond visual line of sight (BLVOS) over a large ranch in Florida. The purpose of these drones is to collect precision agriculture data that would ultimately help farmers to develop more sustainable practices.

XAG’s latest-generation agricultural drone, P100, is now available for sales globally. The versatile drone for precision farming can autonomously undertake spraying, fertilizing, and sowing functions for multiple crops.

Vietnam is the world’s second-largest rice exporter, and XAG says its agricultural drones have become the “new favorite” of farmers that grow the crop.

Hawaii may seem like a tropical paradise to many, but its climate and location make it vulnerable to some rapidly growing and destructive invasive pests – a reality officials are now dealing with by deploying drones to battle a species of rhinoceros beetle ravaging the archipelago’s iconic coconut trees.

DJI’s intelligent farming solutions arm, DJI Agriculture, has just released a new industry insights report focusing on best practices for drone spraying. But one detail that immediately stands out in that document is that the sale of DJI agricultural drones has really taken off in the last couple of years.

Ecuador is the world’s leading export of cacao, the chief ingredient in single-origin chocolates. Over 90% of the cacao production in the country is undertaken by small farm owners. But a downward trend in crop prices and labor shortage during the busy season has left farmers struggling to improve efficiency and remain profitable. This is why they have now turned to drones for fruit tree spraying.

Broadly grown on 600,000 hectares of farmland in the country, cassava cultivation provides employment to thousands of rural workers in Cambodia. But cultivating a crop that can grow higher than one meter, and sometimes even surpass the average height of farmers, is not the easiest thing to do. So now, to meet the growing demand for cassava-based products such as food, flour, paper, and alcohol, farmers are looking at agricultural drones that bring with them the promise of increased productivity.

With the world’s second-largest forest area, Brazil is among one of the countries that has pledged to end and reverse deforestation by 2030. But since humans planting trees is a slow process that cannot meet our urgent climate goals, the South American nation is now experimenting with drones to spawn native tree species.

By detecting and identifying vegetation irregularities at an early stage, drone-based remote sensing can minimize losses to growers everywhere. But do the current methods of aerial remote sensing qualify to be called “precision” agriculture? Not really, according to this manufacturer of multispectral sensors.