It’s true in almost every job: in order to be successful, team members have to be working from the same information. This not only improves collaboration and communication, but it creates consistency for your operations and allows you to streamline a multitude of different processes. And when it comes to teams of agronomists, since their jobs can be complex and laborious, it is especially important.
Agronomists are tasked with monitoring different crops of multiple farms each spanning hundreds of acres. This is a challenging task in and of itself, but if the information they are working from isn’t consistent, it’s nearly impossible to do the job correctly. In order to curb these challenges, more and more companies are turning to drone technology to take the guesswork out of their operations and make sure each and every one of their agronomists is working smartly, accurately, and efficiently.
Rising to the Challenge
The agriculture industry has become such that growers cannot effectively monitor their crops entirely on foot. Take, for example, Corteva: an agricultural company providing growers with a complete portfolio of information pertaining to their crops, including a balanced and diverse mix of seed recommendations, crop protection suggestions based on soil samplings, and digital solutions focused on maximizing productivity to enhance yield and profitability. With such expansive swaths of farmland, how can a company like Corteva ensure they are providing growers with accurate, detailed recommendations – based entirely on data and analytics – to help them manage their crops?
Photo credit: Corteva
Live Map
It can take hours, even days, for a grower or agronomist to walk an entire field attempting to gauge how healthy the crops are. Even then, the results from manually walking a field can be inaccurate and are oftentimes based on estimations rather than specifications. DroneDeploy’s Live Map gathers instant insights, creating a map as the drone flies. This can help agronomists understand yield threats right at the edge of the field.
DroneDeploy's Plant Health Live Map
Working in tandem with Live Map is Plant Health Live Map, one of the most useful DroneDeploy features when it comes to aiding crop management. By visualizing vegetation variability across large areas, growers can identify irrigation issues, disease, pests, nitrogen shortages, and weather damage.
Seed Determinations
Enabling agronomists to make smarter decisions based on the most up-to-date view of the field will not only improve yield, but it will also maximize profits. The data generated by DroneDeploy is instrumental when it comes to providing the grower with actionable results. The insights gathered allows agronomists to provide accurate seedling prescriptions, fertilizer recommendations, and nitrogen determinations. DroneDeploy enables agronomists to make better decisions faster, all while keeping the client informed without losing valuable time.
Drone Operations Management
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates there to be nearly a billion acres of farmland in the United States. To map that much acreage would require thousands of labor hours, so the only effective way to accomplish this would be to deploy a fleet of drones. Companies that have launched such coordinated efforts have used this fleet as a method to quickly and accurately pull field data. But as more and more pilots take flight, problems can inevitably arise.
Using DroneDeploy’s Drone Operations Management, however, companies have the confidence their pilots are following their detailed flight plans. Not only can they guarantee their pilots are operating safely, but they are also in compliance with any and all FAA regulations. By utilizing this feature, companies and pilots alike have access to pre-flight checklists and flight logs, which capture information at the time of flight, and ensure they are compliant and flying according to standard operating procedures.
Drone Operations Management also automatically reports on overall usage and pilot behavior. This level of data has proven incredibly useful for companies looking to identify what is and isn’t working within their drone program.
A Single Drone Solution
The most important thing DroneDeploy enables agronomists to do is take information directly from the farm to the office in a matter of minutes. Nothing is lost in translation and everyone is working off the same information. In order to correctly monitor crops, it’s crucial the same set of data is being studied – and the best way to capture that day is through a single drone data solution: DroneDeploy.
Contact a DroneDeploy Expert to Learn More
Want to learn how DroneDeploy can help your business? Contact us today. Need more information? Watch our webinar on getting started with drones in agriculture.