"SEC | S20W6: "The Use of Drones in Agriculture"

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What role have drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) played in modernizing agriculture? Use your country as an example if applicable.

Drones are reshaping pretty much every industry and agriculture is no exception they're helping a lot of people in the agriculture industry. Growers, ranchers, academics to bring about better faster and healthier workflows and yields. Not to mention costs drones are also lowering the cost of traditionally capital intensive operations.

A drone can be flown out to check the fields structures and any other subject much faster than by vehicle or foot and in many cases it's a lot safer to send a drone first before ground truthing yourself.

How do drones contribute to precision and efficiency in agricultural practices? What are the key benefits of using drones in agriculture?

Areas of crop damage irrigation issues and more can quickly be identified by creating an instant google map of this nature. Growers can also incorporate more advanced sensors such as multi-spectral or thermal sensors for more advanced data acquisition some like the mica sense altum also have a thermal sensor for an even deeper look at field health like water drainage issues and more specific areas of the field in need for targeted spring.

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Spraying drones are used to apply herbicide, pesticides and other liquid applications directly to the field. The great thing is that spraying drones can be flown fully autonomously. These drones are intelligent enough to know when to return for a fresh battery or more liquid payload in autonomous flight mode.

The same spraying drone are able to quickly convert from spraying mode to spreading mode, spreading attachments are used to put down solids like granular fertilizers and seeds unlike spring which is obviously used to put down liquid payload. these spraying drones are able to dispense up to 33 pound a minute of granular product.

How do drones help manage soil moisture and nutrient levels in crops?

A great use case of spreading drones is for putting down the cover crop like clove reduces the amount of soil loss due to erosion and over time actually increases organic matter content which leads to greater improvements in soil structure stability and increased moisture and nutrient holding capacity.

Cover crop can also help with weed mitigation where the cover crop quickly grows and chokes out possible weed seed emergence ahead of the planting and growing season so you can see there's a lot of benefits to put down the cover crop in field. One of the major issues with traditional cover crop application is the compaction of the field using tractors and heavy equipment the beauty of drones is that they fly over the field spreading cover crop any time of the year without compacting or negatively affecting soil.

Explain the significance of multispectral and hyperspectral imaging sensors in agricultural drones.

Farmers and ranchers are using drones to keep track of their herds and keep them safe. Drones are able to scout long distances looking for the herd or potential strays and if the rancher is using a thermal camera drone, livestock can be located any time of day and more quickly through their thermal signature. The scouting with a drone is very easy and can be performed with either an rgb or thermal camera. Drones are able to cover a wide area very quickly after a storm or another event.

How drones help in soil mapping and why is it important for precision farming?

In agriculture the first use case is scouting specifically scouting through map making drones, even some consumer grade models are able to make incredibly detailed maps of growing fields using a process called photogrammetry by flying an automated grid. The drone captures regular photos of the field below through software like pix4d or drone deploy these photos are stitched together to create something called an ortho mosaic

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This orthomosaic is an accurate representation of the ground below measurements like length area and volumes can be pulled from this orthomosaic data.

Before I conclude I would like to invite three fellow Steemians to participate in the contest
@crismenia
@eveetim
@georgitsachev

Thank you for reading my post.