How agri drones are helping to mange the world’s food supply

TechInformed 

The use of drones by Europe’s agriculture industry is set to grow rapidly as new technology capable of precise and targeted crop spraying comes on stream. 

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Regulations around health and safety, the spraying of chemicals and use of airspace has traditionally restricted drone usage across Europe, but that looks set to change as new types of drone and detailed data about their operations are being advanced.

According to Karoly Ludvigh, chief executive of Hungarian drone developer ABZ Innovation, pressures are growing on the agriculture industry to meet growing demand to feed the world’s population in a way that reduces the effects of intensive farming on the climate, and drones look set to play a key part in this evolution.

“Drones will not replace all heavy farm machinery, but we believe that they will play a substantial role in the sustainable future of agriculture,” he says.

According to PwC, in its 2022 report Skies Without Limits, drones are faster than conventional machinery, reduce waste, make better use of land, are better for the environment and improve overall crop yield.

“The ultimate vision for drone use in agriculture is for systems to scan, weed and feed,” the report concluded. “That is, to utilise drones at every stage of a crop lifecycle to bring automation and efficiencies.”

PwC’s report galvanised the UK Government to release an ambition statement and vision for commercial drones in July 2022, after which the Civil Aviation Authority started to consider granting operational authorisation to spray drones over 25 kg.

Previously, in the UK, drones were limited to payloads under 25kg, and dropping any materials from them was prohibited.

While still strictly regulated, the revised policy has drone manufacturers and distributors hoping to crack open a potentially lucrative UK market that PwC calculates will be worth more than £1.5 billion by 2030. The consultancy predicts 25,600 drones will be flying over British fields by then.

That’s against backdrop of its forecast that by 2030, the UK will have 900,000 commercial drones across all industries in operation, creating 650,000 new jobs, contributing £45bn to the economy, and reducing carbon emissions by 2.4 million tons.

“Agriculture will be the fastest growing sector for drone use in the UK in 2024,” says Robert Pearson CEO of drone supplier AutoSpray Systems.

Critical to that growth will be the ability to use drones to spray seed, pesticide and other chemicals over crops and land.

“Current methods of producing food using pesticides are not sustainable but neither is only producing food using organic methods,” says Ludvigh. “We need pesticides at the present time. The question is how many litres of pesticide do we need on each hectare? Drones are a solution to significantly reducing the use of chemicals,” he adds.

Drone sprayer regulations vary widely between countries. Its use to apply spray treatments is already widespread in south-east Asia, with South Korea using drones for approximately 30% of their agriculture spraying, but other countries like Canada and the UK demand more testing to understand the impact of spray drift.

“In Europe it is a very complex question but we are starting to get more specific use cases and we’re seeing motivation [from governments] so it’s only a matter of time before it is legal everywhere,” says Ludvigh.

In Hungary, where drone spraying is legal, ABZ in partnership with the University of Gyor had designed a system it claims uses 90% less water than conventional spraying and up to 50% fewer chemicals.

Its agriculture drone models feature a Controlled Droplet Application (CDA) system which, combined with the downward airflow of the machine’s four propellers, target droplets of liquid onto a crop’s surface with a precision of 1.5mm

While CDA technology is a standard and proven method of improving spraying efficiency and eliminating waste used by several drone makers, the ability to calibrate the angle and airflow of the droplets is what ABZ claims to have perfected.

“Rather than evaporating on the ground or being lost straight into the atmosphere — both of which are wasteful and polluting,” explains Ludvigh. “By optimising airflow, we can deliver a perfect curtain of spray to maximise efficiency. This is what our drones are good at.”

Drone technology is ready to replace conventional air assisted axial sprayers which are transported in various volumes on manual backpacks to large scale farm machinery. ABZ’s battery powered drones have the added advantage of dramatically reducing Co2 emissions from diesel by 82%, it claims.

ABZ already sells drones for agri use direct to farmers or local service providers in eleven European countries including Greece, Poland and Bosnia. It has a deal with a distributor in Ghana and is in negotiations with partners in Spain and Germany.

In Hungary it operates with twenty service providers and claims a near monopoly (86%) on training pilots for drone spraying in the country.

Now it is targeting the UK. Ludvigh says ABZ is making small modifications to the hardware and software to gain CAA certification.

“Our goal is to find a partner in the UK market to help us finish the procedure. We understand what is required for certification and we believe we are ready to be certified.”

The firm’s own research suggests drones have potential use for 100,000+ UK farms but the most important feedback was addressing the problem of “significant” labour shortage.

“This is our angle to market,” says Ludvigh. “In the UK there are a lot of small farmers with limited resources or space to operate large scale machinery, so their only option is to innovate.

Farmers and growers stand to benefit from a reduced workload and the ability to easily reach areas that were previously inaccessible or difficult to spray.”

He adds that drones can replace between 2 to 5 people spraying with backpacks. “In Portugal we have done tests on vineyards with small plots on steep sided hills where 4 to 5 people can be replaced by one drone.”

ABZ’s smaller model costs €12,500 including batteries and charger. Its larger €20,000 drone can spray up to 15 hectares an hour. Spare batteries can be recharged on the ground and quickly swapped aboard the machine to enable continuous operation.

Drones can be programmed with flight plans and simple take off commands so that 95% of the time they can be operated automatically. However, pilots are needed to navigate trickier landscapes and to be able to intervene in case of incident.

A training programme of exams, practical lessons and online tutorials is part of the offer.

“We provide our distribution partners with all the know-how needed to open a training centre,” he says. “In addition, drones are likely to attract more people to train as pilots compared to those wanting to train as tractor drivers.”

UK competition

ABZ faces competition in the UK market from Chinese drone maker XAG, which in December 2022 was granted the UK’s first authorisation from the CAA for agricultural operations.

XAG did so with the help of AutoSpray Systems which imports and sells the drones into the UK and guided the legal pathway. AutoSpray also organises a five-day training course for pilots at Harper Adams University.

“The licence is for commercial drone operation in agriculture, forestry and horticulture and has allowed us to demonstrate the technology to farmers and to gain our first application case studies,” says Pearson.

These include spraying greenhouses with paint (so-called greenhouse shading) and seeding of forests on steep mountainsides in Scotland.

AutoSpray has also spent the year compiling spray drift data (the degree to which liquid deviates from its intended application) to gain clearance from the government’s Chemical Regulation Division (CRD) before XAG’s machines are permitted to begin crop spray operations.

“The market won’t exist unless we produce this data,” says Pearson. “We’re now finalising the data with drift analysis specialist Silso from four major tests for presentation to the CRD.”

Pearson said that he welcomes the attempt by companies like ABZ to enter the market but notes that “when you buy a drone it does not come with a licence. A lot of people have bought agricultural drones but they end up gathering dust because their operators don’t have one”.

DJI is the largest maker of agri-drones in the world and, like XAG, it is Chinese, but with China and the West growing apart as geopolitical tensions rise, being a European vendor, assembling its machines in Hungary, ABZ Innovation spies an advantage.

Ludvigh says, “We increasingly feel that when it comes to sales being European is an advantage even with a higher price. The geo-political situation is starting to get more difficult and data security is also an issue. It is becoming more important that we can say all our development, software and support is in Europe.”