UNMANNED aerial vehicles have caught the attention of many farmers around the world for their operational efficiencies.
Their uptake in SA has been on the rise, with farmers gaining new perspectives about their farm that saves time and increases profits.
US farmer and agronomist Lucas Haag said UAVs offered unique characteristics of data collected with this platform including temporal and spatial resolution.
Mr Haag was a guest speaker at the 17th Symposium on Precision Agriculture in Australasia, held at West Lakes on September 2-3.
"Certainly the biggest story in precision agriculture to capture the attention of producers, industry and the agricultural media since the advent of auto-steer is that of UAVs," he said.
"Recently, a producer said to me that he feels UAVs have the potential to actually set precision agriculture back, that they might be a distraction.
"But, the utility of drones to improve the efficiency of crop scouting is apparent to anyone who has looked at video or still frames acquired by a UAV.
"A fair question that many are asking themselves is: we are already awash in data, what is the value of another layer?"
In his speech, Upper North Farming Systems' Joe Koch, Booleroo Centre, said the use of UAVs had helped him identify problems on his farm.
"Get up in the air and you get a whole new perspective on things," he said.
"You see a lot more than you usually would driving around in the ute.
"UAV data provides new insights into crop and trial analysis through 'aerial truthing'."
Mr Koch said the use of UAVs had helped him on his own farm. He said that by viewing a paddock from the ground, he did not think it had a rhizoctonia issue. But, once it was viewed from the air with a UAV, it was evident that it was affected by rhizoctonia.
Mr Haag said precision agriculture should not only be used for site-specific management but for ensuring greater whole farm management as well.
He said one of the key components of PA was making sure farmers were using quality data.
"Data quality is so important, I believe bad data is worse than no data a all," he said.
"If you have no data you can make your own educated decisions, with bad data you can be led down the wrong road."
More from the symposium in next week's Stock Journal.
* Full report in Stock Journal, September 4, 2014 issue.
Paula Thompson
Stock Journal's markets editor.
Stock Journal's markets editor.
