THE Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) is trying to get farmers to come together and utilise technology to predict plant deficiencies with the use of drones.

RADA’s Senior Programmer Hartnell Campbell says the drone technology being used for mapping and spraying is not being implemented by small-scale farmers, mainly due to the cost of owning the equipment.

“The one that has on the multispectral camera that can tell everything about the crop, that one cost almost $2 million,” he revealed to the Jamaica Observer in an interview.

The drone that is used to spray the farms can cost over $9 million.

The drone — classified as a six-winged model and used for spectral mapping of crops — can detect when a plant is dying. The other is a rotary drone which is used for spraying necessary chemicals.

To offset the hefty expense he is suggesting farmers come together to help cut the costs for spraying chemicals and labour, as the drones can be used to cover a much broader area and go much higher to properly spray larger plants.

“It’s actually a technology that we want farmers to be able to go into their farmers’ group and come together and buy this equipment,” he said.

He explained that currently, farmers who own drones only use them for surveillance, but what RADA wanted farmers to use them for was to be able to tell when a plant is dying.

“When it comes to green light: Green light can be seen by infrared systems long before our eyes can detect that the plant leaf is moving from green to brown as the leaves are what emits green light, so the less shade of green it emits then we start seeing brown (so the plant [is] actually dying long before we can see it),” he said.

In addition, he says it saves costs and time as a drone takes 25 minutes to spray one acre. While farmers have not been able to purchase the equipment themselves, they have been using the technology being offered by Environmental Solutions Limited (ESL) for the past year.

The company’s aim was to help farmers realise the financial potential of precision and climate-smart agriculture. They offer soil and plant intelligence solutions with the use of their drones.

“We are introducing technology that will allow us to capture more elements than the traditional soil test, and to deliver it within 48 hours,” said chief strategic officer of ESL, Stephen Jones in an interview with the Business Observer.

He explained that with soil intelligence the aim is to understand what farmers’ soil is made up of for planting.

“We have a tendency to treat what we can see when [in reality] what we can see is as a result of what we can’t see — which is what is happening in the soil,” he added.

With plant intelligence, he says this is where drone spraying comes in wherein the drones are used to deliver precise and consistent spraying. With the use of infrared light technology in drones, there can be early detection and it’s more efficient.

“If we detect a problem with say worms, worms [are] not going to be in the entire field [as] it’s going to start in a small section, so if we know the section that the worms are [located in] then that’s the only section you should be spraying. We don’t need to spray the whole field,” he said.

Traditionally, farmers would spray an entire field but with drone technology he says farmers have been able to save on the amount they spend on chemicals.

“As a result of doing it this way [drone spraying] what the farmers have been experiencing is a 30 per cent usage, and saving 70 per cent [of] the number of chemicals that they traditionally used,” said Campbell.

In explaining further, he says the net profit of that performance is significant, while giving an example of the net savings from chemicals alone that one pepper farmer, using his services, has seen.

“He uses 15 drums to spray his 55 acres of peppers with Amistar; each drum is $15,000 worth of chemicals. [Now] he only uses three and he’s getting better results,” he said.

He has noticed, however, that most of the farms that use his drone service are large-scale farmers. He believes this is mainly because small-scale farmers still lack an understanding of the math.

“If it’s a two-acre farm then you are talking about $20-$30,000 in chemical costs per drum. They are going to use two drums [at a cost of $20,000 per drum so] that’s $40,000 in chemicals, and they are going to pay a ‘spray man’ $7,000 in costs. In our [drone] world you [are] going to use one-third of that,” he explained.

To spray one acre of land using ESL it would cost a farmer $6,000, however the take-up by small-scale farmers remains low. Due to this, the company is not looking to add more technology to its fleet.

“The farmers are not as consistent as we would like them to be so when we make these investments in additional drones we have to be very careful,” he said.

Additionally, while president of the Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS), Lenworth Fulton, is in full support of the technology, he says using a drone service would not be the best fit for a single, small-scale farmer.

“A man might have a farm of three acres at a location and then there’s no other farm beside him that is spraying that day or have similar crops to spray similar insecticides or fungicides. It [therefore] becomes sort of difficult to get the best efficiency out of that,” said Fulton while speaking with the Business Observer.

He further explained, “If you could get Irish potato farmers to grow their crop and plant one time and then the spraying cycle would be synchronised, then that would be a good use of the drones,” he said.

RADA’s Campbell believes that, with time, the cost of the technology will decrease and farmers will be able to utilise the drones; however, within groups it will be more affordable immediately.

Meanwhile, Environmental Solutions Limited, CSO, is reminding technology-based service providers to be mindful of the farmers and their ability to earn.

” It can’t be about just the provider; there has to be a balance. Yes, we running a business but the farmers have to make money too — and if them not making money they not going to farm. With no farm, we can’t eat and we can’t export,” Campbell said.