SPECIAL FEATURE
100 farmland workers would be needed to do the work of one drone in precision spraying
FACTFILE: DRONE TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
In Nigeria , drone technology accelerated the planning, design, and construction of rice irrigation systems. Teams planning a 3,000-hectare irrigated rice farm near New Busa, some 700 km from the country’s capital Abuja, used drone imagery to make decisions on the layout of both rice paddies and irrigation and drainage systems. Thanks to the drone imagery, they were able to quickly determine that their original design was poorly suited to the available terrain. Nearly 1,000 hectares could be covered in a single day; in comparison, it would have taken a professional surveyor working on foot about 20 days to cover the same area. In Malawi , recurring droughts have ravaged the agriculture sector, threatening the livelihoods
population. High-precision aerial photography captured by drones and weather station data have been used to analyze and predict crop yields. The imagery allowed researchers to find ways to enable the development of more appropriate solutions. In Mozambique , the ThirdEye: Flying Sensors to Support Farmers’ Decision Making project generated information for 2,800 smallholder farmers, mostly women, covering 1,800 hectares of land, helping to improve the famers’ decision- making regarding when to plan, fertilize and irrigate. The farmers recorded a 41 percent increase in crop production and a 55 percent increase in water productivity. Drones can potentially increase the security of livelihoods by enabling better prediction of seasonal and environmental patterns and recommendations
for solutions to low crop yields using data gathered via multispectral aerial
images. For example, when used in precision spraying of crops, drones provide operational efficiency equivalent to the work of 100 farmland workers. The use of drones in agriculture is steadily growing as an effective approach to sustainable agriculture management that allows players to streamline their operations, using robust data analytics to gain effective insights into their crops. In particular, drones are expected to provide significant help to farmers in developing countries. For society at large, agricultural transformation, enabled by drones and other digital technologies and data, will likely result in lower prices, and improved market links will result in greater access to nutritious food.
of smallholder farmers, who constitute 80 percent of the
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