AMES, Iowa — Despite the many advances of aerial technology use in agriculture over the past several years, farmers are still just scratching the surface concerning all these increasingly “identified” flying objects can do.

 

“This technology continues to advance pretty quickly, as we typically see with most new technologies,” said Ryan Bergman, program coordinator in the Iowa State University Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, who has been demonstrating the ag uses of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to farmers.

“To date, I’m not sure that many growers are actively making management decisions with aerial imagery; however, I think most of them are able to learn something from this type of imagery. But it’s often difficult to connect this to a needed change in management or show proven return on investment (ROI) from the imagery.”

Currently, Bergman said while there isn’t a proven way to correlate imagery data to a crop yield of which he’s aware, “aerial imagery gives growers a high-quality overview of the general health of their field. “Crop scouting is still needed in most cases to accurately determine the cause of inconsistencies seen in an image,” he added. “Aerial imagery also does a great job of identifying areas of a field that are performing relatively poorer than other areas.”

Rebecca Vittetoe, ISU extension field agronomist, said UAVs are allowing her and farmers alike to get a better “big” picture of what the field’s yield really looks like.

“The aerial imagery that UAVs can help provide has the potential to give us some highly detailed data that we wouldn’t necessarily get just from walking a field,” said Vittetoe, who demonstrated at the August 1 Van Buren County Pasture Walk with Bergman, discussing technology and regulations regarding UAVs and their uses in pastures and crop fields.

“For example, these images can help highlight potential areas of lower yields, row spacing, compacted areas, drownedout areas, and areas with high-weed densities. We are really just starting to scratch the surface about what these technologies might be able to offer.”

Robert Goodwin, senior geospatial analyst and project manager for Michigan State University’s Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System (RS&GIS), agreed. “Drones are everywhere in the agricultural landscape and are being used to determine plant health, inventory plants, collect farm asset information, assess crop damage and even determine areas of low soil moisture,” he said. “This information is proving useful to agricultural professionals in the context of precision agriculture and farm management.”

But for images from drones to be the most useful, he said it’s necessary to process the data and then display or analyze it in a geographic information system (GIS).

“In a generic sense, this means putting  the data into a map,” he explained. “Once images from drones have been processed and layered in a GIS, numerous opportunities for analysis become available” – for example, “a series of photographs, or even a video, of a cornfield that is experiencing an outbreak of corn rootworm.”

 

Clarke McGrath, ISU extension agronomist and on-farm research and extension coordinator for ISU’s Iowa Soybean Research Center, said he’s used UAVs to “monitor crops, help with decisions or assess damage.

“Luckily, computer speed and storage capacity continue to evolve because of the amount of data that today’s cameras and sensors can compile,” he said. “It would have caused meltdown in a computer from just a few years ago.

“There are sensors and programs designed to estimate or detect about anything related to crop scouting: stand counts, plant stage/size, overall plant health, pressure from diseases, weeds and insects, yield estimates, plant nutrition/fertility issues and drought or excess water stress.”

McGrath added, “With the data and imagery we have now, I still want to ground truth fairly often, but in some cases, I’ve learned that the remote information/imagery is good enough for the decision we are trying to make. I see this trend continuing.” A May 2016 report by United Kingdom- based PricewaterhouseCoopers stated the future of drone usage in agriculture could create an industry of $32 billion or more. In addition, drone technology’s

economic impact in the agricultural realm could surpass $60 billion in the next 10 years, according to the online investment community site The Motley Fool. Although many farmers are intrigued by UAVs, Patrick Wall, ISU extension beef specialist who also demonstrated at the August 1 pasture walk, said cost is a major concern.

“Very few farmers are also pilots, so controlling the drone amongst power lines, trees and other obstacles where cows often spend a lot of time eliminates a lot of potential customers,” he said. “As the technology develops, I think you will see Iowa at the forefront of adoption.” Despite the slow adoption of drone use, Iowa Agriculture Secretary Bill Northey said many farmers are seeing the benefits of UAVs and satellite monitoring to aid in scouting crops and checking on livestock. “I fully expect this to continue and expand,” he said. “Farmers are always looking for good information to aid in decision-making, and both of these tools can help.

“I think we are still on the front edge of fully utilizing all the information that is now available. That is one of the challenges farmers are faced with, with these and other ‘Big Data’ tools. I expect those in the agriculture industry will continue to improve data management and analysis and, as a result, these tools will become even more valuable to farmers as they manage their farms.”