What may happen in the next 50 years

How might we grow plants in the future?

We predict drones, mounted with RGB or multispectral cameras, will take off every morning before the farmer gets up, and identify where within the field there is a pest or a problem”

Drones have been used commercially since the early 1980s. Today, practical applications for drones are expanding faster than ever and they are revolutionizing agriculture.

With the world’s population projected to reach 9 billion people by 2050, experts expect agricultural consumption to increase by nearly 70 percent over the same time period. In addition, extreme weather events are on the rise, creating additional obstacles to productivity.

Agricultural producers must embrace revolutionary strategies for producing food and increasing productivity. Drones are part of the solution.

Drone technology will give the agriculture industry a high-technology makeover, with planning and strategy based on real-time data gathering and processing.

Aerial and ground-based drones will be used throughout the crop cycle in six stages of agricultural production.

1. Soil and field analysis:  They produce precise 3-D maps for early soil analysis, useful in planning seed planting patterns.

2. Planting:  There are drone-planting systems that decrease planting costs by 85 percent. 

3. Crop spraying:  Aerial spraying can be completed up to five times faster with drones than with traditional machinery.

4. Crop monitoring:  Time-series animations can show the precise development of a crop and reveal production inefficiencies, enabling better crop management.

5. Irrigation:  Drones with hyperspectral, multispectral, or thermal sensors can identify which parts of a field are dry or need improvements. 

6. Health assessment: By scanning a crop they  track changes in plants and indicate their health. As soon as a sickness is discovered, farmers can apply and monitor remedies more precisely. 

Looking further into the future, drones might involve fleets, or swarms, of autonomous drones that could tackle agricultural monitoring tasks collectively, as well as hybrid aerial-ground drone actors that could collect data and perform a variety of other tasks.

Agriculture will push for more sophisticated sensors and cameras, as well as look to develop drones that require minimal training and are highly automated.