The future of drones in agriculture looks promising: by 2026, the market for agriculture drones is set to reach $6.52 billion. Drones become an integral part of smart (or ‘precision’) farming, they help farmers deal with a wide range of challenges and reap a great number of benefits.
Most of these benefits stem from eliminating any guesswork and reducing uncertainty. The success of farming normally depends on a plethora of factors farmers have little or no control over: weather and soil conditions, temperature, precipitation, etc. The key to efficiency lies in their ability to adjust, which is impacted by a large extent by the availability of accurate nearly real-time info. By gaining access to a vast pool of data, farmers can increase crop yields, save time and cut costs.
Leveraging the infrastructure of RIT’s School of Technology (labs, faculties etc.), the students of Agriculture and Forestry at RIT can learn about the latest technologies used in Agriculture.
The use of global positioning system (GPS) technology, together with geographic information system (GIS) tools, form a large part of these precision agriculture practices allowing fine-scale monitoring and mapping of yield and crop parameter data within fields. These provide more intense and efficient cultivation methods, which can help farmers adjust fertilizer prescriptions or identify crop diseases before they become widespread. With more data at their fingertips, farmers can make decisions based on economic and environmental factors – for example, by optimizing fertilizer treatment and applying only the right amount at the right time, significant cost and environmental savings can be made.
We undertake drone operations in the field of Data Acquisition, Agriculture, Mining, Survey, Monitoring, & Inspection. We train our students as Drone Pilots to be used in the field of agriculture and forestry.
