The revenue from drone operations can reach 93 times that of manual labor!

Drone operations generate 93 times more revenue than manual laborRice pest control is very important. In the past, in many places, it was not only laborious, but also easy to be poisoned simply by manual spraying. This year, in Beishan Village, Dazhe Town, Suichang County, Zhejiang Province, Wu Xiangen, a 62 year old grain farmer, changed his previous work of “holding his pants and grabbing clear days” during the pest control season and became a “hands off shopkeeper” at the edge of the field, without having to work hard to get medicine.I saw a plant protection drone shuttle back and forth, carrying a maximum of 6 kilograms. Under the influence of wind, the mist like liquid reached the root of the rice, and in over two hours, I completed the pesticide spraying work for 60 acres of rice. As early as 2015, the local government in Suichang issued a policy of providing 70% subsidy for the purchase of agricultural drones, with a unified control over rice production and an annual subsidy of 60 yuan per acre. In the summer, rice planthoppers invaded severely, and in the past two years of the “food war”, plant protection drones have also solved the problem of farmers’ “indiscriminate use of medicine”.Last year, the number of plant protection drones in Suichang increased from 3 to 9, with an operating area of over 10000 acres. A plant protection service company named “Chuangfei” has been established in the local area. All four pilots have passed professional certification, and the team is very young with an average daily operation capacity of over a thousand acres, which can basically meet the needs of local farmers for pesticide spraying.In the opinion of He Yong, Dean of the College of Biosystem Engineering and food science of Zhejiang University, plant protection has always been a major weakness in the mechanization of China’s agricultural production. With the advancement of agricultural modernization and the increase of labor costs, “machine replacement” is the general trend. In the past three years, agricultural drones have crossed the incubation period and will continue to maintain rapid growth in the next five years. “He Yong believes that the emergence of a large number of new business entities and intermediary service institutions has also provided a broad stage for agricultural drones to showcase their skills.Based on the usage situation in various regions, compared to traditional manual pesticide spraying, using drones for plant protection operations has advantages such as efficiency, drug saving, safety, and wide adaptability. The advantages of drones for plant protection are more obvious in mountainous hills and high stem crops. He Yong gave an example: “If the single rotor electric UAV with a payload of 15kg is used for operation, the annual revenue is 25 times and 93 times of that of the motorized spray and manual spray respectively.”With the deepening development of agricultural modernization, agricultural drones not only have a large number of applications in plant protection, but also have great application potential in hybrid pollination, agricultural remote sensing, near surface Internet of Things information collection, disease and pest detection and diagnosis, and the market scale is also very considerable