BioCarbon Engineering technician prepares the UAV for the seeding demonstration at Ellerslie site in Edmonton.

Drones might be seen as pests by Gatwick Airport traffic control, but increasingly farmers are beginning to see them as pest-killers.

This is one of many uses drones have in agriculture. One obvious use is for aerial images, which has led to its take-off in the consumer market. But this same use is making it popular in the agriculture sector.

Drones take the hard work out of planting

European start ups such as HummingBird Technologies and Delair offer aerial imaging for precision agriculture.

One of the most radical ones is British start up BioCarbon Engineering which stated its goal is to plant 500 billion trees by 2060. Its drones fly 3m above the ground and drop two seeds per second.

It is targeting areas affected by logging and natural disasters such as bushfires. Beyond this it can also monitor the growth of seeds. Greening Australia is one of the organisations in partnership with BioCarbon.

Drones can also seek out weeds that humans either cannot or take lengthy periods of time to discover.

Beyond just being reactive, drones can also monitor crop conditions on an ongoing basis. In July, Iowa-based Rantizo won the right to conduct drone-based agricultural spraying and provides solutions to the entire Midwest.

Founder Michael Ott said this could also solve labour shortages that come at the same time food needs are booming.

“Soon there will be 9 billion people in the world but fewer and fewer are working in agriculture,” he said. “We need ways to create more food with fewer workers, so we have to automate and use new technologies like drones.”

He noted his company was popular among a wide variety of agriculture players. “We’ve had interest from wildflower seed producers, hemp growers, commodity growers, berry farmers, vineyards and others,” he told Commercial UAV News last month.

Bug-fighting

Another thing drones can do is fight pests and one pest in particular is causing big problems right now.

The fall army worm has invaded more than 80 crop varieties in over 100 countries since 2016. In 2018 alone it caused $US4.6 billion in losses. Developing countries, including Zambia and Vietnam, have been terribly hit with farmers lacking expertise to deal with sudden infestation.

These creatures can destroy a crop field in hours, fly 1,000km in one night and lay 1,000 eggs in its life. Chemical spraying has been the traditional way to resolve this but it is time consuming and exposes farmers to the chemicals themselves.

One Chinese company, XAG, has developed a drone that does the job en-masse. It does so using 30 per cent less peptides and 90 per cent less agricultural water. It has been tested in the Guangzi province and this growing season killed up to 98 per cent of larvae.

Jonathon Smith (left), Stratus Imaging, chats with Farmanco consultant Andrew Smith at last week's TECHSPO about the AeroShield drone spraying service using the XAG P30 drones

THE next step in drone technology was unveiled at last week's TECHSPO with aerial spray application showcased to the crowd.

Come next year, Landmark believes it will be in a position to launch a full service package that will involve contract spraying with the use of five large drones.

It has entered into a partnership with Chinese company, XAG, which already has 15,000 drones operating in China spraying crops.

Precision imaging company, Stratus Imaging, will operate the XAG P30 drones on behalf of Landmark.

Landmark business development manager Glenn McTaggart said the contracting service would be called AeroShield and involve the drones operating in a swarm formation.

"Initially we will be focusing on smaller, intensive crops and we are doing trial work with growers as we speak," Mr McTaggart said.

"Later on we will do some trials of spot spraying of late radish in cereal crops to see how it goes in a broadacre environment."

Mr McTaggart said they would establish hubs in the South West first to service the horticulture, viticulture and forestry sectors and then establish hubs in the Wheatbelt over time.

"We held some field demonstrations in October last year and there was a good response to those with about 150-200 people attending," he said.

"We are finalising the service package and hope to launch it in March 2020 and clients will be able to book the service through Landmark branches and outlets."

Stratus Imaging's Jonathon Smith said aerial application had been worked on for quite a while but the viability of using a drone had not been proven until now.

"We just recently became certified to be able to have five drones in the air with the one pilot and so we can run our drones in a swarm formation," Mr Smith said.

"What that means is we can carry 75 litres of liquid in total, with redundancy, and so it gives us the ability to cover areas in a timely manner.

"We have carried out quite a bit of testing of the process and we will continue to do that.

"The horticulture, viticulture and forestry sectors are being targeted first and we are also speaking to government departments and councils about the services we can offer to them."

Mr Smith said the drones could be used for a variety of uses such as mosquito control and pesticide and herbicide application.

"The drones will give you the ability to spray crops where you want to avoid compaction or over waterlogged areas where you can't get machinery onto," he said.

"They can be set up to do spot spraying and blanket spraying and if you are blanket spraying we can program them to miss certain areas such as dams and so on so you are not wasting spray and you can also change the rate of application mid-flight as well."

To maximise efficiency, Mr Smith said the drones would fly until the liquid runs out and then when they land the batteries will be replaced at the same time.

"In terms of how long they can run, it really depends on the rate of application," he said.

"With five in the air carrying 15 litres per drone, then they could probably fly anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes."

Mr Smith said at this stage the range was about one kilometre, but again that depended on what the drones were being used for.

"In a broadacre environment we are not going to replace boomsprays because you will need them to cover large areas but this could definitely be a viable alternative to offer a more targeted solution," he said.

Stratus Imaging operations manager and chief pilot Andrew Dedman with a Xaircraft drone at TECHSPO

Flying up to five drones at once above broadacre farms could be an eye in the sky for the State’s grain growers to manage crops, according to Stratus Imaging chief pilot Andrew Dedman.

Speaking from the sidelines at TECHSPO in Katanning last Thursday, Mr Dedman championed the Perth-based company’s ability to provide farmers with aerial imaging and mapping.

Stratus uses normalised difference vegetation index technology, or NDVI, across crops to help producers make “quantifiable management decisions throughout the growing season”.

Flying an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with a multispectral camera, NDVI imaging gives Stratus a birds-eye view of an entire crop to asses its health.

Earlier this month, Stratus became the State’s only company with Civil Aviation Safety Authority certification to fly five drones with one pilot and one controller at once for aerial application.

Mr Dedman, who is also the company’s operations manager, said gaining the CASA certification would prove beneficial in Stratus efficiently mapping farmers’ crops.

One of the drones in flight

“With one drone, you can only do limited areas, but when you get five you can do about 20ha per hour,” he said.

“To get a swarm certification from CASA, the manufacturer (XAG) had to demonstrate that this system could be safely operated with one pilot and five drones.”

Stratus uses 38.5kg plant protection drones designed by XAG, formerly known as XAIRCRAFT.

XAG, a Chinese-founded drone manufacturer, is working to fit the unit with weed detection technology.

Mr Dedman said aerial weed detection would be an efficient management tool for farmers.

“It will allow the drones to fly out in a swarm to find weeds and spray them,” he said.

“It’s great technology and we are pretty excited by what it has to offer.”

Mr Dedman also has an aerial application licence, through Aerial Application Association of Australia, to spray approved chemicals from the aircraft.

2018 April 9th, Essen, Germany - The Red Dot Design Awards announced its 2018 winners, XAIRCRAFT Plant Protection UAS P30 awarded the title ‘Red Dot’ in product design.

Founded in 1955, the Red Dot Design Awards has been running for more than 60 years. It is an internationally renowned design competition, known as ‘the Oscar’s for industrial designs’. Along with the IF awards and the IDEA, Red Dot is one of the three largest design competitions around the world.

In 2018, designers and manufacturers from 59 countries submitted more than 6,300 objects to the competition. From furniture and seating or household appliances, sports equipment and jewellery to robot technology and drones, a total of 48 categories in this year’s competition. XAIRCRAFT P30 is proved to be a product with good design and innovation among a group of professional and international jury, comprising roughly 40 members whom are only convinced by high design quality.

The adjudication of Red Dot Design Awards is strict and fair. Recognised experts from all over the world ensure the high quality standards of the competition and thus the reputation of the Red Dot label thanks to their specialist knowledge. Criteria such as the level of innovation, functionality, formal quality, ergonomics, durability and ecological compatibility provide a frame of reference when judging, which each juror then complements with his or her expertise and background.

“Success in the competition is proof of the good design quality of the products and once again shows that companies are on the right path. When I speak about good design, I am referring to more than just an attractive product. All of the products are characterised by outstanding functionality. This demonstrates that the designers have understood their clients and their needs”, explains Professor Dr. Peter Zec, founder and CEO of the Red Dot Award.

XAIRCRAFT’s product design concept coheres Dr. Zec’s opinion. P30 is not a mere improvement of agricultural machinery, it is more of an intelligent device that perfectly combines product functionality and innovative design.

P30’s streamline appearance refers to fastback design of roadsters, which also provides outstanding aerodynamic performance. Improvement designs are conducted for parts like antenna and propellers to reduce chances of damage, thus ensures better user experience.

The waterproof design of P30 is unprecedented in the industry. The airframe has been redesigned and crafting has been improved to meet higher standards. Waterproofing makes the drone washable easily with jets of water after flight operations. This greatly reduces risk of chemical exposure to the users, and prevents corrosion of the device, therefore further ensures user safety.

XAIRCRAFT Industrial Design Team put tremendous effort in creating a well-performed agricultural UAV. Designers went through a process lasting more than 400 days and nights, spending tens of thousands of hours, numerous study visits to the field. Just to understand primary needs of the users, and make improvement to each module accordingly. Ultimately the Team present a product that is excellent in appearance, functionality and user experience.

The Red Dot Design Awards is internationally recognised for its innovation and creativity. Winning the Award means no doubt in ‘excellent quality’ of the product. Meanwhile, winners gain exposure and recognition internationally, which makes winning the Award a great honour for designers and teams.

Dingfeng XIAO, Chief Designer of the Industrial Design Team at XAIRCRAFT, says winning the Red Dot title is an important milestone for both himself the the whole Team. He is excited to know the result and look forward to achieving further with the Team in the future.

July 3, DALIAN – The World Economic Forum’s 13th Annual Meeting of the New Champions (AMNC), or Summer Davos, has taken place in Northeast China’s coastal city Dalian from 1st-3rd, July. As a foremost international summit to drive innovation and forge partnership, this year’s meeting, themed Leadership 4.0: Succeeding in a New Era of Globalisation, brings together a record number of participants from over 120 countries to address the world’s major challenges.

As an official member of the World Economic Forum, XAG engages with other 1,800 leaders from government, business, academia and civil society in the AMNC to find creative solutions to ensure a sustainable, inclusive and human-centred future.

XAG is a leading agriculture technology company and industrial UAS manufacturer, which developed its own patented agriculture drones, sensors and other digital farming tools for precision spraying, granule spreading and mapping.

Justin Gong, Co-founder and Vice President of XAG, gave a keynote speech at the meeting’s session The Future Frontier of Food: Scaling Agritech, in which he discussed the potential of agrifood technology with Mariam Mohammed Saeed Al Mheiri, Minister of State for Food Security of the United Arab Emirates and other attendees holding leadership positions.

At the meeting, Gong identifies the driving forces behind China’s accelerated development of smart agriculture, in addition to sharing stories on how XAG transforms the traditional agricultural production model and agri-food system through scaling and deploying drone, AI, big data and IoT technology.

“Urbanisation, industrialisation and technological innovation are the main driving forces behind Chinese development in the past 30 years, when agriculture had been considered a low-value sector. However, once new technology and new finance penetrate the rural areas, smallholder economy would present great advantages,” Gong explained later in an interview.

Smart Agriculture Requires Game-changing Technology

The world has entered a new phase of globalisation. One of the pressing challenges is that the world’s population would expand into 10 billion and requires 56% more sustenance by 2050, whereas the amount of arable land would hardly increase. Agriculture is therefore gaining more attention and being reshaped by new technology at an unprecedented speed and scale.

In China, a country struggling to feed 22% of the global population with only 8% of the world’s arable land, smart agriculture has been gradually taking root with the help of innovation and new technology. XAG has played a vital part in this process with its iterative, highly adaptive tech, when facing China’s distinctive agricultural model.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), nearly two-thirds of the 3 billion rural people from the developing world live in 475 million small farm households. Particularly in China which account for almost half of the world’s small farms, 98% of farmers manage farmlands smaller than 2 hectares. Large ground-based machinery, such as tractor, is difficult to reach these segmented lands, especially on hills and mountains. This smallholder economy has long been taken much of the blame for the less mechanised agriculture, with urbanisation and the rising labour cost further exacerbating the problems.

Drone and AI: Reshape the Smallholder Economy

Drone, flexible, cost-effective and easy-to-use, is a powerful weapon to achieve precision agriculture at all kinds of terrains. Since tapping into the frontier of agriculture technology in 2013, XAG has been establishing an integrated network of digital farming infrastructure, such as large amount of RTK navigation base stations and high definition aerial survey field maps, and introducing the fully autonomous agriculture drones to the remote rural areas. This not only helps resolve the rural labour shortage, but also boost agricultural productivity.

XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS sprays over terraces

For example, through the precision spraying and seeding technology, XAG’s agriculture drone proves to save the use of pesticides by more than 30%. For the past five years, such operation has reduced over 6,000 tons of pesticide use, conserved 1.4 million tons of agricultural water and helped farmers achieve a total crop yield increase by 980,000 kilograms.

“From 2014 to 2019, XAG has provided UAS plant protection services to 4.74 million farmers. And the field data we collected through our service helps us better understand the distribution of the whole smallholder economy,” said Gong. “Looking forward into the future of smart farming, I have seen so many opportunities to explore.”

XAG Training Centre

Such cool devices as drones are also encouraging many young talents back to the countryside, who give up their urban life and throw themselves into the wave of drone-centred crop protection business. To speed up the process, XAG has invested a lot in agriculture and drone related education, providing nearly 50,000 users with opportunities to professional farming.

Riding over the Wave of Industry 4.0 and Consumer Upgrading

How Industry 4.0 or digital revolution can serve as a catalyst to smart agriculture is another debated topic in this year’s AMNC. The convergence of drone, AI and mobile internet technology can not only inform farmers of scientific decisions to manage the farms, but also induce new finance model in the countryside. XAG Agriculture Intelligence (XAI), an AI-powered engine developed by XAG, is being applied to the fields to enable variable-rate application supported by AI prescription maps. Field edge recognition, fruit tree locating and weed detection can all be done with ease by XAI, based on the HD RGB and multispectral maps captured by XMission surveying UAS.

XMission conducts surveying operation

Fruit tree locating by XAI

Meanwhile, as these new technologies being introduced into the farmlands, financial institutions would change their attitudes towards smallholders who find it difficult to apply for loans. This is made possible when agricultural production and service records are digitalised and shared with outside financial institutions to build individual credit risk scoring system for farmers. In China, XAG has partnered with some of the biggest financial institutions such as Alipay to offer farmers, even those without credit card or collateral, convenient, equal access to loans and claims.

For instance, a farmer in Xinjiang, China has utilised XAG P Series Plant Protection UAS to conduct spraying operation as well as the XAG Farm Monitor to supervise the real-time crop growth. These smart devices have automatically collected an enormous amount of agriculture data which can serve as the farmer’s credit records. When an unexpected hail strikes and injures his Korla pears, the insurance company can immediately confirm such fact and approve his claim based on the agriculture production data.

XAG Farm Monitor

Besides, consumer upgrading has urged the agriculture industry to disrupt the traditional labour-intensive, resource-consuming pattern, while higher product quality and more traceable, transparent food value chain in turn attract consumers to go for premium produce.

Therefore, apart from improving the agriculture production process, XAG has also been striving to rebuild the trust between producers and consumers, through its big data and IoT system. The data collected by XAG’s drones include the types of pesticides and the chemical dosage for each spraying – all of which can be uploaded into the cloud and available to be shared to buyers and consumers.

UAS operation demo in Australia

Up to date, XAG’s products and services have successfully operated in a global network of 38 countries such as Japan, Korea, US and Australia. Born in China, XAG will continue to develop intelligent agriculture solutions adapted to local economy, resolving the food safety problem while creating a more diversified, sustainable future for the world.

December 2018, GUANGZHOU China – XAG’s Research and Development Center in Guangzhou officially released the "XAG Agricultural IoT System”. The XAG Agricultural IoT System is composed of a series of farmland IoT devices and application software. This release of the XIoT kit includes: XAG® FarmCam 1, XAG® FarmMonitor 2, and the WeChat-based "Electronic Guardian" Mini Programs, as an important part of the intelligent agro-ecology of the science and technology at XAG.

At XAAC 2017, the company unveiled its first-generation farmland monitoring station, Field Monitor 1, which was affectionately known by farmers as the "electronic guardian". As an agricultural monitoring and recording device which is completely powered by solar energy and connected by the mobile communication network, XAG FM1 opens up a new possibility of agricultural production. 

From the dragon fruit base in Guangdong to the ant forest in Alxa, from the winery in Australia to the black soil land in Northeast China, FM1 has been widely used in various occasions. 

After one year of application, through further research, development and iteration, XAG introduces two new products, XAG® FarmCam 1 and XAG® FarmMonitor 2. 

Crop growth is mainly affected by atmospheric environment and soil environment. By accurately recording the soil and meteorological data of crop growth in the production process, the growth status and yield of crops can be predicted.

Through in-depth research in agronomy and other related fields, the XAG Agricultural IoT System uses the FC1 and the FM2 to translate the natural codes into field images, data messages, and field prescriptions. 

In agricultural production, every day will produce a lot of data, light, air temperature and humidity, soil fertility, crop growth and so on. XAG’s R&D team believes that data collection and management, analysis of crop types, categories and growth cycles can help farmers to precisely apply chemicals, as a way to reduce the waste of pesticides and fertilizers, improve crop yields and reduce agricultural management costs. 

The goal of applying XAG Agriculture IoT System is to let farmers see and understand the information transmitted by nature, make scientific agricultural decision-making. 

Meanwhile, trace from the source of food production is a key process of food safety for the consumer market. Letting consumers see the process of agricultural production can help reduce misunderstandings caused by lack of information. It is of great significance to ensure food safety and reshape the trust relationship between consumers and agricultural production. 

XAG P30 plant protection drone spreading grass seeds on scene

April 25, SICHUAN China – XAG has just launched a patented granule spreading system JetSeed™ at its Special Event held in Ruoergai Grassland, Aba, Sichuan. JetSeed™ Granule Spreading System is designed to dispense granules such as seeds, fertilisers and pesticides precisely and effectively to any environment through high-speed airflows. It helps to combat grassland degradation, one of the world’s biggest environmental challenges, using AI prescription map and high-accuracy drone spreading solution.

At the launch event, XAG introduced this cutting-edge technology to Ruoergai Grassland, one of China’s most primitive nature reserves, by spreading grass seeds on 670 hectares of degraded land with a fleet of P30 Plant Protection UASs configured with JetSeed™ Granule Spreading System. This is the first time that drones, AI and airflow seeding technologies were harnessed to restore the grassland biomes at plateau area.

XMission conducting surveying mission above grasslands 

AI-driven Drone Spreading Solution, to Save Plateau Grassland Biomes on 3600m Altitude

As a relatively fragile ecosystem, Grassland has been subjected to severe degradation with only 10 percent being conserved. Despite the continuous efforts taken by governments and NGOs, grassland restoration remains a worldwide challenge.

As XAG’ s co-founder Justin Gong said, "70% of the rangelands across China are in urgent need of revegetation, and many countries are also facing the difficulty to spread grass seeds for grassland restoration."

One of the biggest difficulties is to restore a healthy vegetation through selective seeding, even in rugged terrains. Grass seeds should only be broadcasted on specific land patches to avoid damaging the original native plant species while enhancing the abundance of the entire grassland biome. At present, most restoration work, however, still rely on manual labour or no-till drills and tractors, finding it difficult and time-consuming to identify degradation levels and distinguish broken patches in detail. Manual spreading is undoubtedly the least efficient, and the ground-based machines are not adaptable to complex terrains while struggling to achieve selective vegetation control.

XAG’s precision spreading solution empowered by artificial intelligence can exactly address this global problem. Specifically, through learning and analysing grassland data such as plant species and vegetation distribution captured by the surveying UAS, XAG Agriculture Intelligence (XAI) can generate AI prescription maps to guide a Variable-Rate Application (VRA) seeding operation. Coordinated with XAG P30 Plant Protection UAS, a fully autonomous drone with SUPERX®3 Pro flight control system and centimetre-level RTK navigation, JetSeed™ can then dynamically control its output volume and spread the seed mix precisely to the broken land patches indicated in the prescription map. The seeding efficiency can reach up to 43 hectares of lands per day (when working for 8 hours), a task formerly requiring 64 labours to complete.

XAG Artificial Intelligence analysing land data to produce AI prescription map

Cutting-edge Granule Spreading Technology, for Multi-Environment Operations

According to XAG's CEO Peng Bin, most granule spreading machines currently available in the market do not have an optimised design to guarantee spreading accuracy and are easily affected by external factors such as environmental winds and terrains. XAG JetSeed™ becomes the first to re-engineer the spreading mechanism and pushes both efficiency and precision to an unprecedented level. With an adjustable built-in rolling feeder, it can compensate the output volume to the changing flight speed and therefore ensure a demanded dosage. Two powerful mixers are set to avoid seed cluster. Moreover, harnessing the Bernoulli Principle, 8 embedded Electronic Ducted Fans (EDF) produce high-speed, focused airflows for precisely spreading granules to the target area without drifting. 

XAG's CEO Peng Bing explaining the technique principle behind JetSeed™ 

Apart from restoring the degraded grasslands, XAG JetSeed™ can also apply to many different scenarios including precision farming, ecological restoration, scale fishery, disaster prevention, etc. For instance, XAG JetSeed™ can conduct rice field direct-seeding without disturbing the soil at up to 5 ha per hour, 150 times faster than manual seeding and 5 times faster than the high-speed transplanter. It can also precisely spread solid form fertilisers and pesticides to curb invasive species or boost crop growth.

As an agri-tech company, XAG has been leading the agriculture drone market with nearly 30,000 drones operated in over 19 countries, and it has successfully provided precision spraying services on over 5 million hectares of lands in China.

With its JetSeed™ Granule Spreading System rolling out, XAG now goes even further as it introduces smart agriculture solution into the world of seeding, fertilisation and ecosystem preservation. As it taps into the increasingly burgeoning drone spreading market, XAG is to shape the future of smart farming while embarking on a new mission to provide efficient, practical solutions to restore Earth’s ecosystem.

2018 July, Heilongjiang China - XAG observes a rising demand for plant protection UAS in northeast part of China, with number of P series units operating in the region growing rapidly during farming season this year.

Heilongjiang Province, along with Liaoning and Jilin Province as the Northeast region in China, is one of the major market for plant protection aviations. The number of UAVs, operating area, coverage and other aspects has far exceed other regions of the country. Compared with 2017, the agricultural UAV market has developed and changed rapidly this year.

The number of agricultural UAVs in Heilongjiang Province in 2017 was very small, back then it was difficult to carry out large-scale plant protection operations covering the whole province. However,  the number of UAVs has grown significantly starting from this year’s operating season. XFIS data indicates with XAG P series plant protection UAS alone, there’s more than 1000 units operating in the region.

Since the beginning of the operating season in May 2018, the total operating area in Heilongjiang has exceeded 0.6 million ha. , and Heilongjiang has become the first province in China to break through such coverage in the area of UAV plant protection operations. It is estimated that the total operation area of the region will reach up to 1.6 million ha. this year, but it is far from covering the demand of 16 million ha. cultivated land in Heilongjiang.

China is entering an ageing society. In Heilongjiang Province for example, the number of people over 65 years of age is 4.558 million, and with forecast increase of 1 million in 10 years, accounting for 12 percent of the population. 

With the ageing of the rural population and the sharp reduction of the labor force, the stable plant protection market will attract more wait-and-see people to join in with the higher situation of UAS plant protection this year. 

It is expected that in 2019, the plant protection UAS market will usher in a bigger explosion, a significant increase will happen to both the number of plant protection UASs and the coverage of operation.