Agriculture 4.0 is here. The fourth agricultural revolution. It seeks qualitative and quantitative improvements in farm products through technologies such as robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and artificial intelligence. Precision farming and climate-resilient farming systems have already taken the centre spot. The use of Unmanned Aerial systems (UAS) or drones is increasing. In a few instances, drones are also called “flying robots”.
How can drones be used in smart farming?
Drones can help monitor crop yields. They can also help increase water use efficiency in farming by assessing water stress. The same holds for nutrients. Drones can be deployed to achieve efficiency in the use of nutrients. Pest management is another area where drones have a role to play. Drones help to get accurate information about the soil.
What are the benefits of using drones in agriculture?
The mapping drones collect geo-information from the farm fields. They help provide real-time data for informed decision-making, which ultimately helps in increasing the sustainability of farming. Drones lead to increased efficiency in operation and substantial cost savings.
So, where’s the problem with adopting drones for agriculture?
A recent study has concluded that the autonomous use of drones is feasible for agricultural applications and awaits only the regulators’ allowance. Regulators are concerned over the following points, among others:
- Drones are new objects in the airspace. Air traffic management is a significant security concern.
- Drones can violate the rules of privacy as defined by the law of various countries.
- Using drones can cause injuries to people and property, which may be due to any component failure or may arise due to a lack of proper training.
- Drones may lead to violation of data protection rights.
- Misuse of drones is also a growing concern among regulators.
- Drones can be hijacked.
- It is also opined that drones disturb public peace.
But the future is promising
Despite regulatory concerns, a Goldman Sach report says that drones are sure to invade the agriculture sector. The drone market is expanding at a compound annual growth rate of about 56%. By 2050 the share of agriculture drones will be 25% of the global UAS market.
- Precision agriculture revolves around the evolution of deep learning, machine learning and the Internet of Things (IoT), all along with remote sensing technology.
- Not only this, but further automation is also coming up. One example is GPS-based path planning. Paths for various drone activities like surveying, spraying and seeding can be planned in advance.
- Internet of Drones (IoD) is the newest term in this field. People are working on inter-drone communications.
- Research is also heading towards developing a Farm Management System (FMS) that includes integrated cyber-physical systems on the farm, allowing big data and artificial intelligence techniques with autonomous data processing. Things have moved on to something like Intelligent Precision Agriculture, which represents an integrated environment of several IoT devices and drones deployed for precision agriculture. There, the security of communication channels comes into play, for which private blockchain technology-based solutions are emerging.
- In more giant farms, drones may be used in applications like retrieving data from remote field sensors.
What do we need?
- We need to develop the skills for using drones, whether it be the manufacturing of drones, piloting a drone, or extracting information from a drone-based dataset.
- Awareness is required. Awareness among the authorities so that they can enforce the regulations; awareness among the general public so that they can understand and reap the benefits.
- A participatory process is also the need of the hour to understand and grasp the available technology and impose the regulations accordingly.
