Spraying drones fly over orchards

“It’s too difficult to hire people.” After seven years of planting fruit trees, Liu Yanghai has a growing sense of urgency.

He is in charge of the Gannan navel oranges planted in an orchard of 150 mu. He needs to apply pesticides more than 20 times a year. If the previous method of inviting labor is used, 10 people are needed each time, and it takes two days of continuous work to complete the pesticide application. But once there are not enough 10 people, or there is a sudden heavy rain the next day or even for several days in a row, it will be too late, and the pest problem will appear immediately.

Now that the older generation of pesticide applicators are getting old, it is difficult for the new generation to be willing to go to the orchard to do complicated pure manual labor. What should we do? Dozens of fruit farmers have been worrying about this problem.

Some have taken notice of agricultural drones, but also worried about their effectiveness. In the end, everyone encouraged Liu Yanghai, “Go and try it, and we’ll see how it works.” After a spraying session, after waiting for two days for no pests to occur, the group bought nearly 20 agricultural plant protection drones at one time.

Not only is there a shortage of personnel, but the operation of orchards has faced more and more challenges in recent years. Professor He Xiongkui, dean of the Agricultural UAV System Research Institute of China Agricultural University, analyzed to the reporter of 21st Century Business Herald that according to statistics, my country uses an average of 3 million tons of pesticides every year, but the actual utilization rate of the traditional manual spraying method is less than 30%. It has caused a lot of waste of commercial pesticides; at the same time, the process of excessive and inappropriate pesticide spraying will also affect the health of farmers.

“The key to agricultural plant protection drones is to bring ultra-low-capacity pesticide application technology, so that the spray droplets can stay on the leaves, and the front and back sides can be attached with drugs, while reducing the amount of pesticides. From the perspective of temperature and humidity, night is the most suitable Spraying time. Therefore, on the whole, low-capacity pesticide application technology + drones have achieved high efficiency and intelligence.” He Xiongkui continued. Domestically, the flight platform and control system of plant protection drones have developed to a certain extent, and the related technologies have reached the world’s leading level, and the cost of domestic products is much lower than that of Japan and other countries. With a series of promotions such as domestic policies, this is It is a very good opportunity for overtaking on curves. Of course, in the process of agricultural mechanization and intelligence, there is still room for continuous efforts.

“Try it”

Three years ago, he was troubled by not being able to find a helper, and saw that some people in the surrounding area started to use agricultural drones. There was a group of fruit farmers around the corner. Liu Yanghai became the first person in the area to eat crabs.

Then the worries were gone. He calculated an account: Before using the drone, the orchard he managed needed to hire 4 workers for each spraying, which cost about 1,500 yuan. Calculated three times a month, the labor cost could be saved by about 54,000 yuan per year. Yuan. The use of drones to spray medicine can also obviously save water and medicine. The cost of manual medicine spraying is 4,500 yuan each time, and the use of drones only costs 2,500 yuan; in terms of water, manual spraying requires 24,000 catties of water each time, and drones cost 2,400 catties, which is only one tenth of the former.

Taken together, Liu Yanghai saved at least 120,000 yuan in cost after using the drone. “National and local subsidies add up to more than 10,000 yuan, so it doesn’t cost much.” He said with emotion, and the agricultural drones at that time were already very smart. Once there was no water or electricity, they would automatically fly back. No hassle to use.