Sunday Times

Propellers over the paddies as drones ease farming load

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● The next-generation farmhand in Japan’s ageing rural heartland may be a drone.

For several months, developers and farmers in northeast Japan have been testing a new drone that can hover above paddy fields and perform backbreaki­ng tasks in a fraction of the time it takes elderly farmers.

“This is unpreceden­ted high technology,” said Isamu Sakakibara, a 69-year-old rice farmer in Tome, a region that has supplied rice to Tokyo since the 17th century.

Developers of the new agricultur­al drone say it offers hi-tech relief for rural communitie­s facing a shortage of labour as young people leave for the cities.

The drone can apply pesticides and fertiliser to a rice field in about 15 minutes — a job that takes more than an hour by hand and requires farmers to lug around heavy tanks.

The Nile-T18 was developed by drone start-up Nileworks and recently tested in collaborat­ion with the local farmers’ co-op and trading house Sumitomo.

In Tome, farmers are on average 68 years old and they may only have another four to five years of farming left, Sakakibara said.

“It’s a matter of whether the body breaks down first, or the tractor,” he said.

Compared to larger radio-controlled mini-helicopter­s that cost around ¥15m (about R1.9m) with spray equipment, the drone is smaller and cheaper, with a price tag of about ¥4m.

Nileworks is negotiatin­g with authoritie­s to allow operators to fly its drone without a licence. It can be controlled with an iPad and runs on mapping software that is simple to operate.

“Our ultimate goal is to lower rice farming costs to one-fourth of what it is now,” said Nileworks president Hiroshi Yanagishit­a.

The drone can quickly analyse a rice stalk and determine how much pesticide or fertiliser it needs, making it easier for farmers to judge their input needs and estimate the crop size.

Shota Chiba, a 29-year-old farmer in Tome, said technology could modernise farming and attract young people back to the land. — Reuters

 ?? Picture: Reuters ?? Nileworks’s automated drone sprays pesticide over rice fields.
Picture: Reuters Nileworks’s automated drone sprays pesticide over rice fields.

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