Commercial drone flight could be legal in the U.S. in as soon as a year, and agriculture appears likely to be the first economic sector to see a significant impact. It’s a lot simpler and safer to fly a drone over a soybean field than it is to deliver a package in a crowded city. But for farmers, questions remain over when and where flying drones is of value. The drone services company Measure is doing tests over corn fields in Raleigh, N.C., in partnership with PrecisionHawk and the American Farm Bureau, as it looks to provide answers. Measure plans to release a report later this year; it will also develop an online tool — a return-on-investment calculator — to help farmers understand if drones make sense for them. “There are cases where it may not make sense,” said Measure president Justin Oberman. “So everybody needs to put a toe in the water and say, ‘Let’s do some analysis and figure out if we really ought to use this tool’.” The American Farm Bureau wants to quantify what sort of return farmers can expect when using drones. “Generally, we’re convinced that it’s a technology that has a great deal of promise. It seems almost axiomatic that it will be successful,” said Will Rodger, the American Farm Bureau’s director of policy communications. “The question is when and where is this going to be something that farmers should use.” Measure is testing with equipment from PrecisionHawk, which provides drones and data analysis for farmers. “Every day we see there’s a lot of misinformation out there. It’s been very hard for farmers to conceptualize savings and an increase in their production from UAV technology,” said PrecisionHawk communications director Lia Reich. Reich said PrecisionHawk believes its services can cut goods a farmer must use — such as fertilizer and pesticides — by as much as 20 per cent. While PrecisionHawk isn’t talking yet about farmers who have used its services, she said it believes crop output can be improved by up to 20 per cent as well. YOU MIGHT BE INTERESTED IN... The potential of drones is for farmers to monitor crops in real time and give them more nuanced treatments. For example, a drone might reveal that a small section of a field is stressed, and that patch could exclusively receive additional watering or nutrients. Aerial photography and videos from a drone are significantly cheaper than those from a plane, helicopter or satellite. “It’s hard to come up with a lot that’s being done now with satellites or planes that you couldn’t just do easily with drones. That in a lot of ways is the thing that makes it sexy,” Rodgers said. Get more business in your inbox Get the business news and analysis that matters most every morning, including the latest on what the coronavirus means for you, in our Star Business email newsletter.
The drone services company Measure is doing tests over corn fields in Raleigh, N.C., in partnership with PrecisionHawk and the American Farm Bureau. Measure is testing with equipment from PrecisionHawk, which provides drones and data analysis for farmers. “We are trying to get a better understanding of how these things work on an individual basis,” said Scott Miller, director of operations at Measure.