S9 E8 - Drones Update

doesn't tell you what actions you need to take. So it still doesn't replace the ground truth or boots on the ground to scout the crop, to verify the problem. And that you know that issue still lingers today, even though we have better hardware, better drones that can fly more efficiently, versus 10 years ago, you know. So I think this is, this is a reason why the mapping drones, or or, you know, the drone remote sensing part, still doesn't get very popular in the production, you know, for

as a research tool, is quite a different story. But for farmers to adopt drone and also the remote sensing drones, I think we still have a way to go. But what really took off in the last four years was using drones to spray chemicals to apply cover crop seed, to apply the dry materials, you know. So the spraying and spreading side really took off in the last four years, and this is a very hot growing market. We're still seeing many new operators getting into the operation

almost on monthly basis all over the country. So I think that's where we see most of the opportunity associated with withdrawal.

mapping drones or. Drones to scout your field, to map the obstacles, to map the boundaries of the field, and also to be able to inspect, say, buildings, houses, or even for commercial airline companies, you know, they use those mapping drones to

map to inspect their planes for potential damages or cracks. And then we're seeing more of the utility companies using these drones to to map the job sites, for example, construction sites, and also to use the survey drones to inspect power line because most of those power towers and power lines are located in a very remote area. The terrains can be a trouble.

These drones replace people and and allow us to to see what's going on with those power towers, if the part is going malfunction, you know, you should they generate more heat. So inspection is a pretty big business. Business united. There's there about 1000 different ways to use these drones. I mentioned a few. You know, you can use it to spray pesticides. You can use it to spray different crops. You can use it to spray desiccants. You can use it to spray defoliants.

Some people spray the shade paint on greenhouse to provide more temperature control on your greenhouses. And we have, we have seen operators spray invasive weeds in parks. We have seen them seed cover crops. Before crop harvest, we have seen them to spray tree crops. For example, a novel application is to using large spray drone to dry the canopy. You know, in a lot of cases, and particularly to prevent the cherry from being

from split, you know. And you can also spray sunscreens, some thick sunscreens, onto onto, say, citrus, you know, oranges to provide to prevent the citrus getting sunburned. Because if they're getting sunburned, that side is usually the fruit is not marketable. So and also, we have some operator interested in mosquito control, using drones to apply mosquito products adulticide to kill the flying mosquitoes. And I'm sure I forget about a few usages, you know, because you can find a lot

of different areas you can use the drones for. And down here in the south, we have so much water, so much rain, we have seen drone operators spraying aquatic weeds, managing the weeds along the irrigation ditches or river banks, you know, those hard to reach area to manage the unwanted vegetation. We have seen folks spraying roadside with it, or thinking about spraying roadside and the railway tracks for vegetation management, many different application usages

that we can find for these firms. Can you kind

focusing on these questions. So the goal is to provide the drone operators and farmers with the best parameters, and also the best main edge, best management practice to spray with the drones to ensure efficacy and efficiency. So far, we have sufficient data to say drone spraying is very similar to your traditional crop duster application in terms of the droplet size, deposition, canopy, penetration and efficacy. There are still differences between the drone

and the plane or helicopter. You know, the drones still don't fly as quick. As your crop duster, obviously, but also as a form of area application, particularly the low GPA. We call it low GPA application. You know, you spray mostly between two to five GPA row crop. You know, especially crop is higher. So within the row crop range, you know the low application volume, it resembles the plane and helicopters fairly well versus the ground sprayer.

So we have seen very comparable results between drones and the planes All right. And also we can achieve similar deposition coverage, and can be penetration with the drones as ground sprayer as well, even the ground sprayer spray, you know, five to eight times more water. But something we learned over the years is it's not it's not always the more water, the

better. I already can get you plenty examples in the past that we achieved a similar or even better canopy deposition and penetration using lower water than, you know, using lower water with drones, than ground sprayer or ground blaster, you

know, orchard, you know, using way higher water. So with that being said, right now, the focus is on, how can we ensure the spray uniformity with the drones at these lower GPA, and how can we reduce the drift and the balance the on target deposition versus drift, because a big issue we're facing is we have to use smaller droplets to spray at a low gallop breaker, but which at the same time, that means the drift can happen quite easily. So we're trying to find a common ground between sufficient

deposition, and also managing the drift effectively. That's hard to do when you only spray two or three gallon per acre of water. And also more efficacy assessment are still being conducted in multiple crops to give operator and the farmers higher confidence that this is going to be available to ensure sufficient efficacy to control the pest. So a lot of focus are in in the simulation of fungicide and insecticide work. We also have some herbicide trial spray in the past in row

crops. But I also want to say this is not a area I highly recommend folks using drones on just because it's hard to spray some of the herbicide evenly, particularly like the content herbicide evenly row crops and also some of the herbicide labels do not support, support low GPA application. You want to go for two, three GPA that's actually against the label. And also some important herbicides that we used in the past do not

have a re application. To give you some famous example of the earliest herbicide, and also the Dicamba herbicide that people spray row crop. Neither one support every application. So there are some challenges with using the drones to spray these herbicide row crops. But also, when you go outside the row crops, you know, say you're looking at pasture, Hayfield, rangeland, vegetation management, non crop that I

think that's where the drone shines. You know, I don't think that where the drones shine as a tool.

operation. So propeller downdraft or propeller wash is an interesting factor, and that's definitely a pretty unique thing for the drone, because from the aerodynamics that we learned, the faster we move, the faster the aircraft moves, the less propeller downdraft we'd see as in fact, the crop duster can still Give you some propeller downdraft, you know, and some air turbulence that that is still a thing, but you know, it's difficult to ask them to spray a

field at a 2030, mile per hour, you know, because their usual operational range is about 150 mile per hour. So they can't slow down and increase the propeller. Downdraft. So the interesting thing with the drones is, when you need high canopy penetration, you know, you are able to slow down and use a fine mist to blow the fine mist very deep into the canopy.

You know, you can shake the crop underneath very hard. So to give you analogy, it's almost like a air blaster, you know, like air blast sprayer the orchard used just putting the air blast orchard face down and spray, you know, so we are able to manipulate those parameters to increase the canopy penetration. But that also brings up a few other faults, or a few other

points that we also have to balance. Usually, when you spray slower, you lose your efficiency, which means you don't cover that many ground that much ground as possible. And also it's likely that when you slow the drone too much, you can blow through the canopy, and at that time, you know, in that situation, we don't want to waste the chemical by pushing them off to the ground, because we're trying to kill the pest in the canopy, inside the canopy, versus blow it through, you

know. So there are a few things we also need to consider. What we have seen also in the past is if your spray volume is too small, for example, only two to three GPA, even though you slow the drone down and try to blow as much wind as possible into the canopy. We saw we just ran out of the droplets to the bottom of the canopy, even though the air may can travel through the canopy, but the droplets are just, you know, too few to begin with. That's another factor to consider,

and and facilitate harvest. So that is not a thing anymore. We have done two or three years of field trials looking into chemicals and the spray GPA and different parameters, at least for modern glory, we are able to control it really, really effective. For bird cucumber, I think the recipe should be pretty similar as well. It's mostly a desiccation job using very hot contact herbicide, whether it's aim or like gramoxone or other contact herbicide. You know, we want

something hot. One thing I really love to see is liberty. If Liberty has a desiccation label, it will be a really, really nice thing, because it does work really well on those weeds, but unfortunately, it doesn't have a desiccation. You know, otherwise, it will be another great tool for us to have. So I think for corn desiccation, you hit a really good point, at least. That's a that's basically butter and

bread for drone operators. You know, when I made my presentation to the Midwest folks, several of them have come and asked me about, how can we precisely spray bird cucumber? Because, you know, unless you have a total weed control failure, they're at they're going to show up around the field edges. There will be a few low, wet spots where it's always weedy, that's where you're going to see that type of weeds, you

know. So it's only going to show up on certain parts of the field, or some of the field typically struggle with weeds, so they want to spray those area more precisely with the draw. And that workflow is fairly easy, because when corn dies off, you know, when it's ready for harvest. Anything green is not your friend. Anything green is supposed to be brown, you

know, that's all weeds, right? So we can draw a prescription and make the drone to spray those spots very precisely that that's not difficult at all, as long as you have a mapping drone, you know. So we can, we can spray the whole field, if we have to. Or we can just spray a few acres where we see most of the bird, cucumber and one glory and and just desiccate it, you know. But one thing we have seen in the past is, after we

desiccate those few spots with plenty of weeds, can. And then the grower, for some reason, doesn't get back to harvest the whole field on time. And then the rest of fields start to grow with all kind of weeds, you know, and that would be a problem. So after desiccation, the farmers have to make a timely effort to get a corn out of the field, otherwise it's still going to eat up by these weeds, again in a short period.

And also talking about corn weed management, I know this might may not apply to to the whole country, but you know, down here, we still got plenty growing degree days after corn harvest in August, sometimes it could be as long as the three months. So something we want to do, and this has been done by the drone operator in multiple states is to spread cover crop seeds before corn canopy gives up. All right, so we're hoping these cover crop seeds can germinate underneath the canopy.

Instead of allowing your Burcu number, your pigweed or grasses or morning gourd to germinate, we want the cover crops seeds to germinate first and then naturally compete against those weeds. So they are so small and they just stay underneath the corn canopy, so they will not compete against the corn for water and nutrients. But when a corn dies off, when the sun gets down, they start to take off. You know, they will utilize the remaining water to utilize remaining fertilizer instead of

being used used by the weeds. So cover crop utilize those resources and grow, and hopefully they can actually compete against the weeds. And also, it's a different way to establish the cover crop way early, you know. And you can also spread the seeds yourself on some of the off shape fields, this may not be suitable for the crop dusters. So we're also looking for that as a possibility to conquer this weed infestation problem in late season in corn. Yeah,

try to desiccate a soybean with the drones. You know, that situation is a little bit different.

fraction of it, right? So what we can do and what we cannot do, that's what everybody wants to know from a non biased perspective. So cn spray can see tiny weeds and be able to spray individual weeds. All right, we all know that it works really well. First, for some our grower already adopted that technology. The drones are not able to do that, because if the drone turns on the spray system on and off, it's gonna be almost like

umbrella shape of the spray droplets coming down, right? So just talking about the hardware, I'm not able to target individual leads as precise as seen spray. The other issue, which might be a bigger problem, is scene spray has all the cameras on the boom, and the boom is only, you know, two, three feet above the ground. Let's just say we're targeting early application, you know, or weeds in small crops. If the cameras are only positioned three, four feet off the ground,

then you can see everything on the ground. So clearly, right? For me to spar spray those really patches to be able to see them. I have to utilize the Mac controls, because the same workflow does not exist on spray drill. Some people also ask, Hey, can you put a camera on the spray draw and put some put your computer, your graphic card. Your AI on the drone so we can see the weeds trigger a decision whether to spray or not, and be

able to spray like that. I said from engineering perspective, well, I'm not an engineer, so don't quote me on it, but from the engineering perspective, and all the smart people I know after working in drones for a few years, I believe if I need, if I have the budget, you know, that's another problem. You know, whether you have the budget to do or not, if I have a big budget, I can get a bunch of smart people in the room and women can figure this out, you know. So as a workflow, it

shouldn't be that difficult. But the issue is all the other things you you have to figure out that come with it. You know, for example, drones is not your ground sprayer. The biggest trouble is payload. We cannot handle too much additional payload or weight carrying with a drone. Second, the battery life is a problem. All right, the more electronics you put on a drone, the more battery is gonna burn, which means the heavier the battery is gonna get, which means the fewer

flying minutes I'm gonna have. So many people ask, how many? How long? How many minutes these drones can fly? The answer is usually not a very impressive number, maybe seven to eight minutes. That's where we at all. Right, so you put all these things on drone, reduce the flying time to four minutes. Now it's literally just can't do anything for you, otherwise, your risk can crash in the drone. It may not even come back

and ran out of battery. Just crash. So that's the issue of putting the same C and spray system on the drone, you know, and make it do the same thing. It just, I don't see a lot of

setting points there, you know, your field operation. So what we play with was, the workflow we play with is, is relying on mapping drones to see where the weeds are, and then we get everyone back, we process images, or kind of figure out where we need to spray, where we don't need don't spray, or don't have to spray, and then generate a prescription, and then export a prescription to the drone, or I can export a prescription to a

regular John Deere sprayer. As long as the John Deere sprayer has pulse width modulation or exact apply, I can make the John Deere sprayer to spray with only a few nozzles to hit the whip patches here and there. That's nothing difficult either. And then that's how we tackle these spa spraying or site specific management, as you mentioned. The good thing is, you can still do it in a fairly cheap way, using the equipment we have now. But the drawback is it does take time. So you have to map the

draw. You have to send out a Mac and drone map the field, analyze images, generate prescription, upload to your machine, so we can do it. So that does take some time, not terribly long, but still not as fast as scene spray. The other issue is I won't be as accurate as the CN square. I can spray some patches, but I can't target individual weeds, and I have seen that happen before, all right, so, for example, some of the Pinot fields, I test the workflow. I can spray the edges

really well. I can spray some of the big patches in the field, but as the spray don't fly through the field, because I have the 4k camera first person view, I can see some of the weeds are just being missed, because I can't justify spraying that grid with only one weed unit.

few drones with no license, with no insurance. That's another sore subject in drone spraying, a lot of illegal operations, and

people spraying with no nothing you know. So those people having no insurance, no training, no paperwork, start to spray herbicides, had no clue what they were doing, not paying attention to the setting, not paying attention to weather condition, spraying in 1520, mile per hour wind, doing a herpes herbicide job and drift all over the place in summer, or spraying illegal herbicide, say your list, or Dicamba herbicide over the top on soybean or cotton, you know, which is a

clear violation of the federal label and cause quite a bit of damage. Around, ended up, don't have insurance, don't have a liability to pay, and then just leave really sour feeling, you know, for the for the farming community in the whole area, you know, so that that would be a really sad thing to see. And also from a liability perspective, I have to say, even

you are a legal commercial operator. You have license, you have insurance, you are your you have your passes, pesticide applicator license and everything if you apply purpose i illegally, or any pesticide illegally and cause the trouble. Let's just say in this case, you apply your list or Dicamba with a drone and cause damage your underwriter, your insurance underwriter, you know it doesn't matter which company you use, they will not pay because there is a clear documentation that

you violated the label or the law in the first place. That basically, basically exonerates your insurance company from paying any of your damage. This is why I said to a lot of visual operators, because I do training for, you know, for for them on

regular basis. Most of them have been to my training, you know, multiple times in the past, I said this many times, don't feel like somebody give you a big job, and that justified risking yourself, your business, to spray something illegal, you know, just for the profit, because if you messed up that job, the consequences, you might lose your whole business. You're and you're still being hold a liable for the damage your cost, you know, depends on how big of master created. So that's a

pretty big risk. I want to mention to all the drone operators. One of the other things

take, versus a generic approval such as EPA gave us. So the effort of creating drone dedicated label has been there for a few years, and I have participated some of the meetings with CropLife America and EPA on the initiative, but I do want to say still gonna be years away, maybe decades away before we see it depends on how quickly the drones are being adopted, depends on how many acres they are being sprayed.

You know, as you all can imagine, if the drones are spraying, if the drones are spraying more and more acres, let's just say all the crop duster in the US combined spray

maybe 130 30 million acres. Let's just say, if all the drones combined spray half of that, then I would expect this initiative in EPA and among the the chemical restaurants will go a lot faster right now, these drones, all the drones in the US, are spraying about 10 million acres right now, based on the latest survey conducted by America's spray room coalition, I'm not surprised to see if we can keep feeding the

market, keep growing the market. Nobody messed up big time, and we don't have big changes in regular regulation, the numbers of acres being sprayed will double probably every 12 to 24 months. So this exponential stage still holds true. After talking to many different dealers, distributors and operators, we all believe that. So we want to see the drone label happen just because we're still in the exponential growth stage and more and more pesticides are being sprayed by

the drone, but there are some challenges as well. For example, the biggest one is what type of language we need to include in the drone label and what they what they are like. But what are those languages we know the PPE requirement, the worker protection requirement, is a big one, because you're not spraying the cab anymore, and we all have drift on ourselves when we spray. All right? Because as a drone operator, I want to stay on the high ground. I want to stay on the. Ground, so I can

see what's going on. The last thing you want to do is set, set your base, set your trailer at the bottom of the field, and then as soon as the drone goes to the other side, and then you lose signal, you lose signal, most likely means you're gonna crash it, right? But higher ground also can be downwind, which is the problem, you know, which means we're spraying ourselves at the same time. So how can we protect the worker, the operator, the visual observer? You know, that's that

has always been my question. And also, how can we ensure the drift is managed? Because if you look into the current aerial label, there are things out there. There are requirements

out there to help reducing the drift. For example, with your traditional crop dusting play some other some of label requirement may tell you that you cannot spray with more than 60% of the because the closer you get to the edge of the wind tip, the more turbulence you see, the more drift you see, you know, and also the drop, the size requirement, I guess we're working on it. Registrants are understanding more about the

drone as a two you know. And hopefully, the more data we can generate, the more efficacy, drift data, the only deposition data, and all these data we can generate from academia, the sooner we might be able to see the future drone labels.

to operate with a liability coverage. That's what we really need for this industry, especially you try, you want to spray commercially, you want to be a custom applicator, then you have to be legal and respect all the rules and laws, even though it may not always make sense, you know, it may. It may take a long time, but that's what we really need for the industry.

And then just try to learn as much as you can, because, as I said something I told people last year, doesn't even hold it true this year of how quickly things changes if you are not type of the person paying attention to newer technology, to new equipment, to new updates, you just like to do the same old thing over and over again. And I will say ground

sprayer is a better fit for you. You know, you can still find some 20 year old ground rig running out there that should be your job instead of being a drone operator, because you're learning something new every day. You know, just just repairing the drone, diagnose the error message popping up on the controller that can be a huge part of field operation in

summer, because they do break pretty costly. So BPO can be willing to learn and be willing to try new things, and then also this apply to your job as well, if anyone telling me, I'm so happy to spring corn fungicide, which is the largest market for every application, and I'll tell them, I'll tell them right away that your business probably not going to do too well down the road. You have to think about, what else can you do? Because there are so many opportunities out there. Well,

one three years ago. It's called agricultural drones for the United States. And also, there's another one run by agrispray. Room called ag spray rooms of North America, both are pretty good, and we try to remove the content and keep it as clean as possible. Because, you know, two years ago, we had so many scammers, international scammers, trying to scam people almost on daily basis. We pretty much kicked all of them out and eradicated those. And also we try to keep the sales ads out,

you know, and make make it useful for people's time. And then I'm also hosting the largest spray drone event, which is called the spray drone End User Conference, is happening later this month in Mobile, Alabama. So this year we are getting a whole convention center for us. So only after three years, you know, now we're so big that we need a convention center for the events. You know, registration has exceeded 500 people, so I'm hoping probably 400 in person at the end, you

know, and with also with remote options. So if you cannot join the event in person, you can register remote and be able to access the conference on Zoom. And also the recording will be available for all participants, you know. But of course, we would like to see you in mobile if you can make the trip