5.3 Blog: UAS Use

The article published in 2017 titled “The Influence of Drone Monitoring on Crop Health and Harvest Size” by M. Reinecke & T. Prinsloo explores the benefits of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) in agricultural applications. UAS can effectively outperform humans using traditional methods to monitor the status of crops (Reinecke & Prinsloo, 2017). Most farmers just don’t have the resources to actively monitor all farming activities and hiring more qualified and competent workers or buying additional farming machinery is not a practical solution (Reinecke & Prinsloo, 2017). UAS can economically fill that gap through aerial mapping and the monitoring of plant health such as chlorophyll levels, temperature, and leaf thickness (Reinecke & Prinsloo, 2017). Additionally, the same UAS to monitor crop health can be used to monitor livestock and gather data on crop damage as a result of theft (Reinecke & Prinsloo, 2017). The three overall benefits of agricultural UAS are:

·         Aerial mapping and photography is substantially cheaper than manned helicopters or small airplanes.

·         UAS are very economical to purchase and maintain as compared to buying other farm machinery to accomplish the same tasks.

·         UAS are small, maneuverable, man portable and can be outfitted with a variety of payloads and sensors based on application of use (Reinecke & Prinsloo, 2017).

The article concluded that most if not all farmers have realized the positive benefits of UAS in agricultural applications. UAS are a viable, efficient, effective, and sound economic solution to alternative methods (Reinecke & Prinsloo, 2017). Within the past year several supporting articles have been published on UAS usage in agriculture. The article “Drone Use in Agriculture Expected to Grow Quickly” by L Hawkes (2017) discusses the practicality and versatility of UAS applications for farms and ranches. UAS can help farmers monitor the effectiveness of different irrigation strategies, provide data to evaluate the best time to reseed fields, and help plan seed planting patterns based on 3-D soil analysis maps (Hawkes, 2017).  L. Hawkes also discusses the major advantage of using UAS for crop spraying.  UAS outfitted with distance measuring equipment-ultrasonic echoing and lasers can accurately apply the correct amount of spray and spray five times faster than traditional farm machinery (Hawkes, 2017). Previously, farmers had to do all of this data gathering by hand and would often have to send soil samples offsite for evaluation. If farmers are not able to make the initial investment in a UAS outfitted with agricultural applications they can contract a UAS company such as Deveron UAS Corporation to collect the data and perform the analysis (Proactive investors: Deveron UAS's drones helping agricultural efficiency to reach new heights, 2017).

References

Hawkes, L. (2017, March 31). Drone use in agriculture expected to grow quickly. Business Insights: Essentials. Retrieved from http://bi.galegroup.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/essentials/article/GALE|A488722362?u=embry

Reinecke, M., & Prinsloo, T. (2017, July). The influence of drone monitoring on crop health and harvest size. Paper presented at the Paper presented at 2017 1st International Conference on Next Generation Computing Applications (NextComp), Mauritius, Mauritius. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/NEXTCOMP.2017.8016168

Proactive investors: Deveron UAS's drones helping agricultural efficiency to reach new heights (2017). . Chatham: Newstex. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1928424061?accountid=27203