In a vineyard in Etyek, Hungary, the sky is filled with the buzz of tiny aircraft as drones whizz about surveying the landscape and precision-spraying the crop from above. Speak to many in the ag-tech sector, and they’ll say this scene is likely to become normal on farms across the world in future decades.
Not only are drones being hailed as a time-saving tool for producers, there’s a broad consensus that they’ll help farmers achieve some key sustainability objectives, from accurately analysing land, to monitoring pests and diseases and ensuring control products are applied accurately.
Underlying all of that, there is drones’ and other automated vehicles’ potential to address perhaps farming’s most fundamental practical issue, by handing over to technology work for which there is insufficient human labour to effectively carry out.
Europe lags behind — for now
In Asia, drones are widely used in crop spraying, and there has been widespread adoption of drone technologies in the US thanks to progressive legislation, initially for monitoring and analysis but ever broadening in scope. Europe, however, has been notably slower off the mark, with use largely restricted to trials and special use cases, such as in some sloped vineyards and orchards.
The EU has laid out its ‘Drone Strategy 2.0’, from which a variety of action points are laid out around the standardisation of rules around drones, safety and security precautions, as well a voluntary ‘trusted drone’ labelling scheme. An EU project has also explored the use of cloud-based data collection for farm monitoring using drones, yielding some promising results.
The intent seems to be there, but it is likely to take some work to smooth out inherently interwoven policy to allow the widespread use of drones on farms.
Looking at the use of drones for pesticides in particular, the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive, in its current form, bans any aerial spraying of crop protection products, unless special permission is granted. There is now considerable pressure from COPA-COGECA, the European farmers’ interest group, to hasten a change to the legislation, citing drones inherent manoeuvrability as making them uniquely suited to safely spraying crops and setting them apart from helicopters or planes.
Market moves from Hungary
As the wait for defining policy for the use of drones in European agriculture goes on, one Hungarian drone manufacturer is trying to pre-empt legislators and get a jump on potential competitors.
“In Europe, there are more and more specific use cases. For example, in Germany or in France, you have a way to legally spray certain slopes in vineyards. The legality is a complex question, but it’s only a matter of time until drones are legal everywhere,” said Károly Ludvigh, CEO of ABZ Innovation, which recently launched its new 30-litre capacity L30 Spray Drone in a pitch to potential customers in the EU and UK, as well as beyond.
“We are actually really happy about this situation right now, because nobody else is really working on [agricultural drones] in the EU because everybody’s saying it’s not really legal at this point. We see it as an opportunity to us to get ahead of the competition.”
Beyond monitoring and spraying, a promising area for drone-assisted pest control is in dropping biological control agents onto crops. Ludvigh noted that field trials using his company’s products and specially designed balls containing Trichogramma parasitoid wasps on orchards had produced promising results. However, while a review by international researchers highlighted the potential of this approach to dispense a number of beneficial insect species, they called for more work to establish its efficacy, as well as the best conditions to preserve the insects for high field performance.
Knowledge is pivotal
The agri-tech sector is no stranger to big claims, and there certainly are some coming from the nascent drone industry. ABZ Innovation say its product can bring up to 50% reductions in chemical use and water efficiency improvements of 95%, all while coming in at a price point significantly lower than what Chinese manufacturers are asking.
To make the claims achievable in practice, it’s clear that high-quality training will be required. In the UK, research has suggested that more concerted efforts are needed to ensure workers’ skills match the technology they’re likely to be using in coming years.
The EU itself has underlined the need for more training and awareness in order for drones to make a smooth breakthrough, while research in Germany suggested that demonstrations of drone technology tailored to individual farmers’ needs is likely to be key. For its part, Ludvigh explained that his company will disseminate training through local hubs where their drones are in operation, providing a broader package to customers than simply selling a product.
All noises from within and outside the tech industry suggest that it is one-way traffic to the mainstream for drones in European farming, with the only doubts remaining being around timescale. According to industry analysts, France’s farmers are likely to lead the way in drone uptake when the opportunity arises, but with sufficient legal and practical reassurances in the coming years, they’re likely to be the first of many fully convinced of the benefits of going airborne.
