A farmer operates an agricultural drone produced by Shenzhen's DJI in Roi Et, Thailand, in this file photo. Shenzhen-made agricultural plant protection drones have empowered Thai farmers to raise their productivity. Xinhua
Located in Thailand's lower north, Kamphaeng Phet Province is characterized by flat riverbeds in the east and high mountain forests in the west, and abundant with tropical fruits and sugarcane.
Local farmers used to employ tractors and manual techniques to fertilize sugarcanes, which needs to be done roughly five times a year.
Chawanakorn Tharamanit, a sugarcane farmer in the province, purchased a DJI agricultural drone in 2022 for sugarcane plantation operations.
He discovered that sugarcane, being a tall crop, requires fertilization by farmers as it grows taller. Using a drone can not only help sugarcane farmers cut fertilizer costs, but also considerably enhance operational efficiency.
According to Chawanakorn, utilizing the drone for foliar spraying raised sugarcane yields by 3,000 tons last year from the output of 17,000 tons in the previous year. Fertilizer expenditure was reduced by 2 million baht (US$57,234).
Chawanakorn is one of hundreds of thousands of farmers around the world who are employing DJI drones to transition from traditional to modern farming utilizing advanced technologies and solutions.
China's smart farming solutions
The use of agricultural drones has brought new solutions for the growth of tropical crops such as sugarcane in Thailand, as well as fresh ideas for Thai farmers and workers in the sugarcane industry to reduce costs and enhance output.
According to DJI, the world's biggest drone maker based in Shenzhen, nearly 10,000 DJI drones have already flown over Thai fields.
DJI agricultural drones can also be seen in Thai durian orchards, soybean farms in the U.S., Swiss vineyards, South African sugarcane plantations, and Malaysian oil palm plantations.
As an easy-to-use tool, drones have also reduced the reliance on physical labor in heavy agricultural tasks and created opportunities for women to engage equally in agriculture, particularly in rural areas.
Naomi Abigail Hermosillo Arias, a 19-year-old female agricultural drone pilot from Mexico, has completed 220 drone operations that spanned over 75,000 acres (over 30,000 hectares) in just one year.
By using drones instead of traditional fuel-powered agricultural machinery, agricultural production can effectively reduce carbon emissions, according to Shen Xiaojun, head of marketing for DJI Agriculture.
"For example, agricultural drones can help save 29 liters of water per acre compared to manual operations in field management," Shen said. "Meanwhile, precise drone operations can reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers, and help reduce the carbon footprint of agricultural production."
Since exporting its first agricultural drone to Japan in 2016, DJI Agriculture, a division of DJI, has begun to explore the global promotion of agricultural drones. The drones have quickly gained traction in overseas markets due to their efficient solutions and reliable equipment performance, the company said.
At present, DJI's agricultural drones have achieved large-scale applications in more than 30 countries and regions out of over 100 countries and regions where the drones are operated.
Statistics showed that as of October 2023, DJI had sold over 300,000 agricultural drones worldwide, with a cumulative operation area exceeding six billion acres, benefiting countless agricultural practitioners.
Giving wing to digital farming
Over the past 11 years, DJI's agricultural drones have proved helpful in replacing labor-intensive and imprecise practices with data-driven decision-making and automation.
In November 2023, it unveiled two new drone models that can be applied in multiple scenarios to make agricultural production easier. The T60 agricultural drone can be used in various fields, including farming, forestry, and aquaculture, with functions such as farmland spraying and aerial seeding.
Mountain area cultivation has always been a challenge for mechanization due to patches of usable land dispersed at different altitudes, irregular distribution of fruit trees, and other obstacles.
Agricultural drones can not only automatically avoid obstacles such as complex electrical wires and poles in orchards, but also identify the position of fruit trees through high-definition images and machine learning, making point-to-point spraying possible.
In recent years, DJI has also worked to develop and promote drone-enabled solutions for blight and weed identification, and variable rate fertilization.
Drone-enabled variable rate fertilization has been adopted in China's Xinjiang and Mexico for cotton chemical control starting from 2021, increasing cotton yield by 5%, according to the drone maker.