2019 Spring Farm Outlook

2019 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine Lincoln Daily News March 21, 2019 Page 23 Continue 8 According to an article in the Journal Star, “the drone will be as common as a tractor for farmers one day,” says Blake Lehman, an ICC instructor. Lehman was one of two instructors who taught the first classes in the summer of 2018. “With the use of drones to scout farm fields increasing across the country in recent years, the feeling was that drone-use warranted instruction on the use of software along with the creation of flight plans,” said Lehman in the article. Pete Fandel, another ICC agriculture professor, wanted to “show students how to establish a flight plan using specific field dimensions.” Drones can be programmed to follow a set path, removing the need for constant control by an operator. For the moment, drone-use in farm fields seems to be limited to the use of cameras for data collection. According to Fandel, drone- use is still restricted by FAA rules and laws. “You’re restricted to the farm fields and you have to be able to see the drone at all times. The maximum flying height is 400 feet.” Lehman says that drones “can be used to track crop population. They can also fly over an area to see which fields are ready [for spraying or harvesting].” Alternatively, drones can sometimes track a farm’s tiling system, alerting farmers when drainage lines are in plain view or when wet spots linger after a storm. This limited use may change in the future, especially as competition with other nations who currently use drones for spray application grows more intense. For example, companies like ecoRobotix in Sweden are working on drones that through “a combination of artificial intelligence and robotics to produce machines that can do the job [spraying weeds] without human guidance,” according to Nat Williams of Illinois Farmer Today. Other researchers in Illinois have similar ideas, and are working with drones to find ways to detect and spot-treat the spread of pests and disease in fields. For example, researchers at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale are working on such technology. According to an article from SIU, “by using drones to evaluate the fields, the team at SIU hopes to speed up the process and make farms more efficient.” “We go through a plot that is showing disease, and we rate it on a scale of disease incidence and severity,” says Lindsey Mckinzie, a graduate researcher at the school. “With the drones what we are hoping to find out, is if we can use them to rate the plots like we would with our eye.” Gathering data involves flying drones over fields and taking pictures. Researchers compare the data with information gathered on the ground to determine the effectiveness of