ONE of the next big things in agriculture may not be on the ground but in the air.
Farm consultant Leighton Pearce, owner of Growing Solutions based at Loveday in the Riverland, predicts unmanned aerial vehicles have the potential to be widely used in farming.
Mr Pearce first became interested in UAVs about a year ago.
"I recognised there were opportunities in farming to use drones for multiple purposes so I started exploring," he said.
Mr Pearce said the many applications for drones fitted four main categories - inspection, monitoring, surveillance and assessment.
"A farmer could put a normal image camera on the UAV to check water points of fencelines," he said.
"There is a more expensive market that sees specialised cameras such as normalised difference vegetation index photography of crops, so growers can make assessments of fertiliser requirements based on the image.
"Using a thermal camera there are opportunities for frost risk, analysis of damage after a frost or to see the effect of a heatwave.
"The opportunities are infinite - as far as what a farmer imagines."
He said he expected the technology to tie in with other high-tech practices in modern farming systems.
"Those guys doing precision agriculture, I think they will be the early adopters," he said.
"They do go hand-in-hand."
Mr Pearce said he had been to farms in the United States where there was a marked uptake of the technology.
"It's had a lot of growth in the US and I believe we will emulate that in Australia," he said.
"In the US a lot of farms have their own and we're starting to see that in Australia."
Mr Pearce said most of the commercial UAV market in Australia was focused on its use in mining, but there had been an increase in companies offering packages.
He recommends people do their homework about whether a UAV would be of value to their particular enterprise.
"You would want to know you were going to use it and the information it is giving back to you is going to get a profit," he said.
Mr Pearce said one of the biggest costs of setting up a UAV could be cameras.
He said there were near-infrared, NDVI, thermal and multispectral cameras that would all provide important information on the health of a crop.
"Even a basic camera will tell quite a bit as well," he said.
"The cost of the camera is one of the major expenses which may preclude some farmers from buying, and instead using contract services."
He said using a UAV contractor was cheaper than alternatives such as helicopters, and could be more immediate than satellite, without issues of cloud cover.
"The beauty of this is it can be on demand," he said.
"And it can provide a clearer and more defined image as well.
"Using a really good camera you can get down to 1 centimetre pixels - you can almost target leaves."
He said the technology could also be used with live streaming and real-time analysis.
Mr Pearce said there were a number of contractors operating, with more setting up.
"Make sure they are accredited and insured, the same as you would with any contractor on your farm," he said.
The story Farming future takes flight first appeared on Farm Online.
