Drones changing the face of agriculture
COURSE SHOWS FARMERS HOW TO USE TECHNOLOGY
A two-day course teaching farmers and agronomists how to use drones to improve farming operations wrapped up on Friday in Readymade.
The event, held at the Readymade Hall, was hosted by LandView, a company that provides drones for commercial (farm) use.
Drones can be used for both crop and livestock.
For livestock, drones can be used to locate herds and cut down on the amount of time it takes to find them.
“You can see them a lot easier from the air,” said Markus Weber, LandView co-founder.
For crops, there are a number of uses available, from crop scouting with an aerial view of the crop to the use of multispectrum sensors which can be used to find active and lessactive crop growth.
“It shows you the status of the crop,” essentially,” said Weber.
Information gathered by drone can be used as a data source for variable-rate application of products such fertilizer, herbicides and fungicides.
“You can use it as a way to reduce the use of pesticides, in some cases,” said Weber.
Drone use is expanding and is part of the changing face of agriculture as technology leads to improved efficiencies and farming strategies.
“It’s using data to make decisions on the farm,” said Weber.
“It gives you great efficiency for crop scouting. It saves you time, and you see all parts of your field much more quickly. And you’re seeing your field much more quickly than when you’re walking on the ground.”
However, Weber said some regulations are out of date. And at the moment, operators are still required to be within lineof-site of their drones.
“That’s still somewhat inefficient,” he said. “If you want to map an entire field, it may take around 20 to 30 minutes. And that sounds like a short time, but if you are farming thousands of acres, that is a long time to be out flying a drone.”
Weber said crops with high inputs have the most to gain from high-end drone use.
“All the irrigated acres in southern Alberta have high or varying rates of inputs,” he said. “You do use more inputs than you do on dryland farming.”
In the future, Weber says advances in sensor technology could allow for diagnostic uses on plants.
“It no longer will show you crop health, but actually diagnosing specific pests, whether it’s leaf disease, an insect pest, or a weed species,” he said. “It will give us that in a few years.”
Weber says he tries to instil in farmers and agronomist the idea of drones being “more tool than cool.”
“There are real, practical applications where you can get value out of them for the farm. I want people to go beyond taking cool videos for Twitter and start using them for crop scouting.
“And, of course, if you are going to use a drone, make sure you are doing it legally.”