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Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

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Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#111

Post by morsch »

fragmede wrote: post #59
morsch wrote: post #54

I can see this making sense for monitoring and observation and even for very targeted application of pesticides. But bulk application of pesticides and seed, I just can't imagine land vehicles aren't more efficient in terms of energy use and longevity. Maybe rice fields are particularly unsuited to it. But buying a drone as an investment for your children... I don't think it's gonna last that long.

Do you mean that you don't think the drone's electronics won't physically last long enough to pass down to their children? The lithium ion batteries will need to be replaced every few years, and eventually the motors and control boards and other parts will need to be replaced as well (rotors), but why wouldn't they be able to pass the drone and the skills and knowledge down to their children?

Batteries need to be replaced, yes. But overall flying things need to be light, and light things are either flimsy or expensive and often both. So whatever the baseline is, it'll break more often than non-flying equipment.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#112

Post by jajko »

freilanzer wrote: post #84
majoe wrote: post #80

Slightly related, but off-topic. It's astonishing how high-tech agriculture has become without the general public noticing much of it. I recently had a longer talk with my uncle, who is a farmer in South Germany, where he told me about the newish technology he is using: - Milking robots: the process is entirely automated, the cows basically go inside the milking stations by themselves. - His newer tractors are all dr…

> - A lot of data is collected for each cow and processed by an external company. This goes down to temperature measurements at each teat in the milking robot. The external company monitors each cow and plans individual treatment to prevent diseases and to optimize milk production. Very unfortunate for cows that they're able to produce milk for human consumption.

If cows would be useless to humans, their population would be probably in hundreds/thousands globally, or we would let their whole sub-species just die.

Milking is the least bad thing we do to them, I would recommend focusing more on other parts of farming/ranching if you care.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#113

Post by jajko »

avdlinde wrote: post #73
tda wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And more, smaller, robots vs large tractors could put an end to monocultures. Monoculture is the result of optimizing for minimal human labour, not an optimization for yields. So when labour is free, mixed fields are the way to maximize profits

How about harvest? Machines are quite specialized, how do you see that working out?

Bigger farms overall, which is anyway the trend so they utilize economies of scale. Or machine rentals if there is plenty of need from smaller farmers.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#114

Post by mywacaday »

majoe wrote: post #80

Slightly related, but off-topic. It's astonishing how high-tech agriculture has become without the general public noticing much of it. I recently had a longer talk with my uncle, who is a farmer in South Germany, where he told me about the newish technology he is using: - Milking robots: the process is entirely automated, the cows basically go inside the milking stations by themselves. - His newer tractors are all dr…

There are also collars that monitor temperature and gait analysis to identify infection and hoof problems. Cows get automatically segregated at milking time for inspection. A monitor is also available that goes over the tail and monitors when a cow begins calving and alerts the farmer, traditionally farmers would wake up every hour or two to check on cows that were close. Successful farmers have always always on the cutting edge of anything that can increase margins or efficiency, they have to be it's a tough business.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#115

Post by sshine »

olex wrote: post #89
wrp wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fawns , as in female deer? Is hitting them with tractors really a problem?

Fawns as in "deer children". When young, they lie down in fields a lot, and don't have the flight instict developed yet, so if they're in the field with the "parent" deer out getting food and the tractors / harvesters come by, it can be legitimately dangerous.

Their instinct is to stay put, which means they don't run when the tractor comes.

A drone flies over the field, maps where the fawns are staying put, sends a message to automated tractors to reroute.

This is probably the most "feel good" application of drones. That and detecting landmines.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#116

Post by 082349872349872 »

SCUSKU wrote: post #6

Are drones being used in the US as well? This type of labor savings seems like a pretty obvious win. Of course I’m just a CRUD monkey living in the city so I have no idea how farmers actually operate.

Until recently, we manually checked fields before mowing in order to flag fawns.

Now it's done by drone (and IR makes for good contrast).

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#117

Post by doubloon »

ensocode wrote: post #83
stoneman24 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a recent episode of Countryfile [1](popular UK BBC1 program on the country and farming) the resident farmer was mentioning both crop rotation and the issue of black grass invading his wheat fields. The black grass was slowly out competing his cash crop and would difficult to remove (perhaps taking the entire field out of any production for a year or the use of chemicals). Having a horde of little robots might grea…

I am searching for solutions in this field. Do you have any links to any consumer hardware for this. like drones which can cut down small invasive plants which were selected by AI?

Tertill cuts weeds but the ai is “if object is tall and firm enough to trip my bumper, turn”

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#118

Post by fakedang »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #79
gumby wrote: post #32

This is so great. My long term dream is that robotics take over farming, individually plucking each weed or weevil, and metering just the right amount of water for each individual plant, so that all the crops are organic. Most of the chemicals (yes, including nitrogen fertilizers) offset labor, so when the labor is free we shouldn’t need them. And people won’t have to spend their lives in stoop-back work or exposed t…

Robot labor isn’t free. You pay in capital costs, energy costs to run them, and ongoing maintenance costs if you use them a lot. Environmentally, these costs might be more or less than the chemicals they replace, but it isn’t am obvious comparison. Changing farming methods along with automation might work better, like vertical farming techniques.

Sorry, but in every example of vertical farming I've seen, there's nothing that actually works. Nearly all of the farms and companies I've visited and been exposed to use a lot more water and energy (in all forms) compared to a conventional farm. The only appeal I see are for places with limited agricultural land space such as Singapore or the Netherlands, or arid regions such as the Middle East or Central Asia. Even then, it's much cheaper for most of these places to simply import from abroad.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#119

Post by fakedang »

sahinyanlik wrote: post #97

In the article they didn't write about side effect but In Turkey My relatives also using drones for rice farming. And trees are dying since they need to fly drones higher then trees. Birds are dying as well. Previously I remember there were so many birds but now there is none. I also remember there were frogs, snakes etc. and now there is none.

I doubt that it's drones causing those issues. More likely it's the poor environmental practices carried out in Turkey. Turkey is a truly beautiful country, but most of the natural beauty is falling to disuse as the government prioritizes other industry, of course with a massive dollop of corruption on the side.

Re: Agricultural drones are transforming rice farming in the Mekong River delta

#120

Post by freddie_mercury »

blackoil wrote: post #82
morsch wrote: post #54

I can see this making sense for monitoring and observation and even for very targeted application of pesticides. But bulk application of pesticides and seed, I just can't imagine land vehicles aren't more efficient in terms of energy use and longevity. Maybe rice fields are particularly unsuited to it. But buying a drone as an investment for your children... I don't think it's gonna last that long.

Vietnam has lot of terrace farms done on side of hills. Maybe land vehicles aren't optimized for them.

Not really. We have a very small minority of them in picturesque areas that are extremely poor because making rice terraces is a last resort thing in poor farming areas.

The overwhelming majority of the rice comes from the Mekong and Red River Deltas which are, like all deltas, extremely flat.

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