14 Follow us on @PrairieFarming Better Farming | July/August 2024 ‘PEOPLE ASSUME DRONES ARE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE, BUT THE OLDER GENERATION TENDS TO DRIVE ADOPTION.’ DRONES: HOW CAN THEY MAKE FARMING EASIER? By EMILY CROFT Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have been creating a lot of buzz in agriculture for over a decade now. Most drones were initially purchased for entertainment, but their uses have evolved. How can UAVs be used to make farming easier across the Prairies? Scouting, mapping, and application of seed and fertilizer can all be performed by drones. They also have spraying capabilities – the source of much of the drone excitement — but spraying pesticides remains illegal in Canada. To make the most of potential financial, time, and labour savings, it’s important to have a strategy for managing data and using drones as a tool. “When drones first became a consumer item and farmers started buying them off the shelf – it was typically the first workhorse imaging drone that farmers were using – they were saying ‘Oh my goodness, I can see my fields from above,” recalls Tom Wolf, professional agrologist and sprayer technology specialist with Sprayers 101. “The farmers with drones don’t really fly them anymore because they don’t know what to do with the info. How do you analyze the data? How do you use it to change the way you farm? What tools do you have to work with? That’s the sticking point.” Dr. Steve Shirtliffe, professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at University of Saskatchewan, agrees that if producers want more than images, they need to manage information. “You have to have a workflow figured out,” says Shirtliffe. “Photos don’t do much good. There’s nothing wrong with them and they can provide producers with a lot of entertainment – but to use them for scouting and mapping they have to have a plan for analyzing data and turning that into actionable information.” Putting drones to use in a meaningful manner requires thought and planning, but producers have already been using them to increase their efficiency and reduce labour across Western Canada. Scouting and mapping Scouting and aerial photography are some of the longest-standing uses of drones in agriculture. “Scouting is what brought us into the drone world,” says Markus Weber, DRONES: A NEW PERSPECTIVE Ruslan Ivantsov - stock.adobe.com
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