Grainswest - Tech 2024

Tech 2024 grainswest.com 15 BY EMILY R. JOHNSON • LEAD PHOTO COURTESY OF SHUTTERSTOCK “It allows our adjusters to get out to hail claims and other high urgency, high priority claims instead. It benefits all producers in these areas.” —Russell Shuttleworth Bob Hoffos, geospatial technologies (GIS/GPS) and drone instructor at Olds College shares this concern. He believes more specific data must be gathered for spray drones to overcome regulatory hurdles. “For each pesticide or herbicide that’s going to be used on a drone, we need to determine whether it poses risks to humans and the environment. “The downwash and downwind effect are going to be affected by the speed of the drone, flying heights, nozzle loca- tions, droplet size, environmental condi- tions at the time of the flight, the terrain and windspeed, among other factors,” said Hoffos. “Those are a lot of technical factors that need to be assessed and un- derstood, and we need to build use-cases where pesticide residues on the ground are measured and overlapped.” While research must continue, Bills is confident the current state of spray drone usage has passed the hype stage and is well into the use-case refinement cycle. “We’re seeing the adoption of these spray drones for very specific niche cases such as spraying fencelines, certain weed patches in pasture and spraying over standing waterbodies for invasive insect species.” However, due to the Prairies’ short growing season, the seasonal research required takes time. “We have to go through the seasons and trial itera- tions to get proper data that supports a permitted use of a chemical,” said Bills. Along with this regulatory challenge, the scaling up of drone use in broadacre crop production has proven to be another complex barrier to adoption. A May to September growing period leaves a small window in which researchers can test the capabilities and risk factors of spray drones. Drones have a small carrying ca- pacity, so logistically, it’s harder to cover the acres you would with a ground unit. Drone swarming, a co-ordinated group of units in flight together, can cover more ground faster. Precision AI employs single drones that carry a larger payload, as it is more efficient, said Bills. “With the small drones, you have to change the batteries quite often, which is just not a very fun job for anybody to have; that’s the technology barrier that we’re finding in large scale agriculture.” LOOK DOWN ON WILDLIFE An Agricultural Financial Services Corporation (AFSC) pilot project that focused on drones to assess wildlife dam- age in crops moved into the operational phase earlier this year. The project was backed by a substantial $900,000 grant from the Government of Alberta. Over four years, the project was carried out in areas of the province most affected by wildlife damage. These included the Peace Region and districts east and southeast of Edmonton. The use of drones helped to refine the insurance adjustment process as it tackles challeng- es faced by field staff. Russell Shuttleworth, innovation team lead for AFSC, acknowledged drones are quickly becoming an important tool in the agricultural industry. “Drones went from being a novelty to being a somewhat functional tool in certain instances.” He and his team found the use of drone imagery allows adjusters to better assess damage caused by ungulates such as deer and elk without causing addition- al damage to fields from foot traffic or equipment. Drones are not being used to scout crop damage caused by waterfowl because it is more subtle and difficult to assess accurately with drone image technology. In the past, adjusters counted trails in and out of fields to calculate wildlife damage. Now, AFSC outsources drone services. The captured imagery is as- sessed by a machine learning algorithm. “Now we have a historical, visual record of what’s happening in those fields,” said Shuttleworth. The pilot project was initially open to drone-savvy farmers able to fly their own fields. Response was poor. “We’ve got such a short growing season here in Alberta that when it’s farming weather producers want to be farming, not flying their fields,” he said. AFSC outsourced drone operation services, which promot- ed strong farmer response. “Another thing is that these drones become obsolete in three to five years,” he added. “The lifecycle just isn’t what it is for a tractor, for example.” The decision to outsource drone services has produced additional benefits for farmers. The wait time to have a field assessed once averaged two weeks but is now about four days. Wildlife damage assessments look for cumulative damage that has occurred throughout the grow- ing season and are most often completed just before harvest. With shorter turn- around time, farmers can harvest their wildlife-damaged crops sooner and better avoid risks such as bad weather. Third party drone services free up adjusters’ time, and response times for non-wildlife-related claims have also im- proved. “It’s a benefit not just to wildlife clients in the area,” said Shuttleworth. “It allows our adjusters to get out to hail claims and other high urgency, high priority claims instead. It benefits all producers in these areas.”