AI-guided drones could begin turning farm tractors obsolete

Vidalia Onions are a $150 million local industry vulnerable to climate change. Morgan has joined the vanguard of farmers who are turning moving from tractors to drones as they adapt to the rising cost of chemicals and contend with hotter temperatures, heavier rains, heartier weeds and prolific pests. Farmers have been using drones over 20 years mainly for scanning farms with cameras to map where crops are thriving and failing. Now drones are for hands-on crop management: to precision spray herbicides, insecticides and fertilizers and distribute seeds in planting season.

A “featherweight flying tractor” is how Arthur Erickson, CEO of Hylio, described the firm’s agro-drones. The Houston-based startup has seen demand for its drones soar; roughly 700 are at work on 700,000 acres of cropland annually. Early adopters like Morgan are driving a major shift in the business of food. Drones are poised to disrupt the tractor industry, and unlike many other high-tech farm trends, this one is actually good for small and mid-sized farmers and a win for the planet to boot. In the eight months since Morgan invested $40,000 (a lot cheaper than the roughly $700,000 it would have cost to replace his old ground rig), it has cut his fuel costs and reduced his agrochemical usage by 15%. The drone has also enabled him to work his fields after heavy rains, when the ground is often too sodden for heavy equipment, and has spared his crop from the routine damage caused by tractors. It has also saved his soil from the compaction, bogging and erosion caused by farm machinery.

I first saw an agro-drone at work last summer on a farm in Iowa. Fifth-generation farmer Brian Pickering and his daughter launched an MG-1P Rantizo drone made by China’s DJI, that spanned 9 feet with 8 whizzing propellers. Their drone sprayed an organic pesticide at a rate of about 7.5 litres per acre and 14 acres per hour. It also drizzled rye seeds across swathes of soy fields at 11.3kg per acre.

These aerial acrobats use less than a tenth of the energy of ground tractors and don’t squash crops, rut the earth or even touch the soil. Drones look like the future. Morgan’s onion farm offered convincing evidence. While Pickering runs a big commodity farm with an R&D budget, Morgan struggles to stay profitable on his 300 acres. The drone purchase for him was not a whiz-bang new toy, but a survival tool to help minimize expenses. As Hylio’s Erikson sees it, drones “are like little X-wing fighters. They give small farmers the tools to be as efficient as some of the most advanced tractor technology at a fraction of the cost,” he said.

As the hardware of agro-drones becomes more sophisticated, so does the software, which is being developed by startups such as Canada’s Precision AI. This will enable drones to use computers to identify exactly where and how much chemical is needed, plant by plant rather than blanketing an entire field with the same treatment.

Drones won’t completely replace tractors anytime soon. Their payload is limited to about 75 litres, not nearly enough to handle the volumes required between harvests. But they’re capable of displacing the expensive, wasteful crop-dusting of herbicides and fungicides still performed by aeroplanes and helicopters across millions of acres.

Whereas crop-dusting spreads chemicals that bleed beyond the edges of the fields, drones deliver the chemicals in fine mists directly into the crop without overspill. The nimble flyers can work around obstacles like power lines and trees, drastically increasing the efficiency of chemical applications.

While the advantages of agro-drones are significant, the world’s two largest tractor producers, Deere & Co in the US and Mahindra & Mahindra in India, have begun to invest only half-heartedly in drones, which are a tiny fraction of John Deere’s $52 billion empire. The titans of mechanized agriculture may be slow to recognize it, but the era of flying tractors has arrived.

At his Georgia farm, Morgan says that, for now, he’s keeping a low profile with his drone as he learns how to wield the new tool. “I like to keep it hid,” he said. Farmers are widely thought to be sceptical and conservative, and for good reason—they’ve seen a lot of high-tech gadgets come and go that weren’t worth their salt.

“But I’ve been very well pleased with it,” Morgan said. “The fact of the matter is, the thing works.”

Amanda Little is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering agriculture and climate.