Farmers eye drones - and so do animal rightists

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Are they a farming tool of the future? Or eye-in-the-sky spies? Depends on who's at the remote control.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports that the Australian Lot Feeders Association wants tougher laws that stop animal rights groups from using aerial drones to spy on farm activities. Last year, the animal rights group Animal Liberation used a drone to film free-range egg farms in New South Wales, and then gave the footage to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to investigate whether the farms were actually free-range.

Currently, using drones to spy on farming activities is legal in most countries. Bruce Baer Arnold, assistant professor at the University of Canberra School of Law, predicts in The Conversation that "facility operators taking the law into their own hands, shooting pesky drones . . . we can expect to see some claims in court before too long." PETA's blog post "Game of Drones" reveals a plan to purchase a drone to monitor factory farms. This is about to get very interesting.

But what if it's a farmer doing the spying? The Associated Press reports that experts see agriculture as the most promising commercial market for drones. Drones can be used to monitor disease, apply precision sprays of fertilizers and pesticides, even scare away birds and other pests. Idaho farmer Robert Blair, who built his own drone to monitor his 1,500-acre farm, tells the AP "we're talking surgical agriculture, which allows us to be more environmentally friendly." BF