DRONES and UAVs in agriculture are very much the buzz at the moment but machinery dealer, Emmetts has focused on the data rather than the device to make productivity in-roads for farmers.
Offerring what is essentially a rapid turnaround crop imagery service, Victorian and South Australian equipment dealer Emmetts’ CropFlight uses lightweight drone technology with the results available rapidly allowing farmers to make timely crop decisions.
The Emmetts service is provided in liaison with US company Agrobotix, and returns crop or vegetation health data just 24 hours after the lightweight drone buzzes the property.
It’s data that can resonate with croppers as they can identify crop deficiencies and work with their agronomist on rectifications with fertiliser, irrigation or weed control.
The service can save time and money. Measuring the health of a crop in-field can be used to generate a prescriptive in-crop fertilisation program that can then dialed into an application map - a process delivering targeted results.
Emmett's’ CropFlight service data can also be combined or overlaid with historical field data collected via harvest yield mapping or Greenseeker style technology allowing the farmer to generate an accurate assessment of crop health before making management decisions.
While use of imagery data in this context is not new, the timeliness of satellite imagery and the time to have the data converted to application maps has typically been slow.
Emmetts integrated solutions manager, Matthew Burns said the service’s value depended on what farmers were after.
“In a good season you could be reducing your input costs with fertiliser by use of minimal rate application mapping," he said.
“But there’s also weed hotspots that can be identified and the ability to vary spray rates rather than blanket coverage, or you may be looking for pest damage."
Mr Burns said it's probably the only time farmers get an overall insight into paddock health through the growing season. Normally most of your data comes in with harvest yield data, “and that’s post crop and doesn't help you rectify in-season”.
CropFlight can supply maps in formats easily loaded into any precision ag software including Apex, for use in creating variable rate prescriptions.
From a single flight, georeferenced RGB (colour) and NIR (near infra red) imagery, False Colour Index and False Colour Management Zone (shape file format) maps can be supplied.
All imagery and maps can be downloaded the following morning in .kmz format that can be overlayed in Google Earth and in GeoTiff format and that can be downloaded to a smartphone or tablet for crop scouting purposes, Mr Burns explained.
“That’s where it becomes valuable for the farmer - the more you investigate the information the more you pick up. It might be that 20 or 30 per cent of your paddock is performing worse than it should be so you can investigate what is causing that and why.”
The service is a good start to addressing soil variability as cropping paddocks get bigger and fences that once designated soil types are knocked out.
Emmetts can overlay CropFlight information with EM38 soil property data and harvest yield data. “We run a generic software that will do that for any customer and provide advanced analytics to highlight areas of high variability in the field,” Mr Burns said.
The flight time is long range by comparison to some UAVs “We can push our flight time out to nearly 1.5 hours and on a reasonable weather day you’ll get close to 200ha out of a flight dependent on the paddock shape.”
Enquiry for the service has come from unexpected quarters, Mr Burns said. “We are finding a lot more enquiry from areas including in rice and cotton and some in corn that we hadn’t initially thought about.
“That includes irrigated crops to see if there is the right irrigation pattern in place.
“And rice is one crop that uses imagery a lot so this appeals because of the very quick turnaround compared to satellite imagery,” Mr Burns said.
They're not waiting for the next pass of the satellite and they can have the data file ready to drop straight into their system where once they were waiting for up to a week for that to come back.
“It’s about getting the best out of their land, their equipment and their inputs.”
