No matter which country, no matter how advanced your economy and technology are, agriculture is a basic industry. People rely on food as their heaven, and agriculture is safe for the world. Agriculture occupies a certain proportion in any country. With the development of modern technology, countries in the world have different degrees of application of UAVs for plant protection, but in general, the application of UAVs in agricultural production is increasing.
Development history of agricultural plant protection drones
Japan is one of the first countries to use tiny agricultural drones for agricultural production. In 1987, Yamaha was commissioned by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture to produce the first agricultural drone, the 20kg-class spraying drone "R-50". After that, Japan widely used unmanned helicopters for field crops. After more than 20 years of development, Japan has increased from 307 in 1995 to more than 2,400 now, with more than 14,000 operators, becoming the largest country in the world for agricultural drone spraying.
The United States is one of the most mature countries in agricultural aviation application technology. It has experienced the development process from manned helicopter plant protection technology to drone plant protection technology, and has now formed a relatively complete agricultural aviation industry system. According to statistics, the United States currently has more than 9,000 agricultural aircraft, accounting for 28% of the world's total, and the direct contribution rate of agricultural aviation to agriculture is more than 15%.
Russia has a vast land and sparsely populated areas, and it also adopts the method of drone plant protection on a large scale. It has a large number of agricultural aircraft operation teams, the number is as high as 11,000, and the annual processing area of arable land accounts for more than 35% of the total arable land area.
South Korea is not far behind. Since the first introduction of unmanned helicopters for agricultural aviation operations in 2003, the number of agricultural drones and the area of agricultural aviation operations have increased year by year.
2. Classification of plant protection drones and related advantages
There are many kinds of drones on the market now. As far as plant protection drones are concerned, Grignard thinks that they can be distinguished from the following two aspects:
1. According to the power, it is divided into oil animal and plant protection drones and electric plant protection drones
2. According to the structure of the model, it is divided into fixed-wing plant protection drones, single-rotor plant protection drones and multi-rotor plant protection drones
So, what are the advantages of using drones for plant protection activities?
In Grignard's view, first of all, the efficiency of drones is very high. The large-scale operation can reach 120-150 acres per hour, and its efficiency is at least 100 times higher than that of conventional spraying. In addition, it can also ensure the health and safety of agricultural personnel and plant protection. The drone is operated by ground remote control or GPS flight control, and the spraying operators operate remotely to avoid the danger of exposure to pesticides, which improves the safety of spraying operations.
Secondly, agricultural drones save resources, correspondingly reduce the cost of plant protection, and can save 50% of pesticide use and 90% of water consumption.
In addition, the plant protection drone has the characteristics of low operating height, less drift, and can hover in the air. The downward airflow generated by the rotor when spraying pesticides helps to increase the penetration of the logistics to crops, and has the advantages of good control effect and so on. Moreover, electric drones are small in overall size, light in weight, low in depreciation, easy to maintain, and low in labor cost per unit operation; easy to operate, and operators can generally master the essentials and perform tasks after about 30 days of training.
3. Five trends of plant protection drones
1. Simpler operation: Plant protection UAVs are complicated to operate, especially unmanned helicopters, which have higher abilities for operators. With the continuous development of plant protection drone technology, the operation of plant protection drones will be simpler and easier for users to get started.
