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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

#191

Post by declan_roberts »

schaefer wrote: post #180
tomhoward wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case anyone’s reading this who is interested in working on it: I’m building a company/platform that does a lot of this, particularly the “metering just the right amount of water for each individual plant” part. The thing I have in mind is very low cost devices (sub-$20) with mesh radio comms, inputs to read from sensors and outputs to control irrigation, and TinyML running the devices to optimize everything in rea…

If you use an Olla, the plants self regulate their water intake. See the book gardening with less water by David A. Bainbridge

Great for backyard tomato plants, not a commercial farming option for tens of thousands of acres.

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

#192

Post by nradov »

dmurray wrote: post #69
fragmede wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are getting away with using drones as you mentioned, but the FAA's rules have had a real chilling effect on the hobby, which is a problem. Where drone piloting is a now a necessary skill for soldiers to have, and we're not encouraging the hobby, I think the next few decades aren't going to play out as well as they could.

The military doesn't rely heavily on skills developed by hobbyists. In the vast majority of cases, you learn to shoot a rifle or drive a tracked vehicle or weld a nuclear reactor at the military's expense, after enlisting, even though you could have learnt those skills as a hobbyist. This isn't 15th century England where every man was required to keep a longbow and cricket was banned because it distracted from archer…

The Civilian Marksmanship Program begs to differ. Congress specifically established that program because too many military recruits were showing up without knowing even the basics of safe and accurate shooting.

https://www.usar.army.mil/News/News-Display/Article/1028255/...

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

#193

Post by SailToSki »

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.

Yes! I know of at least one instance where a farmer in Colorado is using them for seeding and pesticide spray.

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

#194

Post by KaiserPro »

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.

This was my thought but I suspect for rice farming its easier than wheeled based devices.

As you can imagine rice paddies are a bastard for wheels, because its muddy as fuck. Its not like its economical to put a cement pan underneath as some rice plants have >1m roots[1] so you can't treat it like watercress (thats a wild assertion, maybe you can)

Also, the banks that hold the water to make it a paddy are unlikely to be regular or load bearing. Moreover, the fields are not laid out with a road to link them all together.

So conventional tractor with thin wheels/floaters just won't work. And smaller vehicles are just impractically heavy or impossible to get into most fields.

As for the AI shit, I don't think there is acutally that much. It looks a lot like its just standard drone mapping/possible machine vision to detect the state of the crops/border of the field.

Would this scale up for western style large fields? no. but for small irregular terrace style fieldlets, it would

[1]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1626/pps.3.281

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

#195

Post by algoatecorn »

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…

We're not moving away from nitrogen fertilizers. Ever. Why?

Look at the following three graphs: global population, staple crop yield, and nitrogen fertilizer application.

Now overlay them. That's why.

Also, there are myriad chemical inputs that cannot be removed simply due to free labor. Sure, a robot can pluck weeds, but what about fungal and bacterial diseases?

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

#196

Post by cookiengineer »

tomhoward wrote: post #176
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…

In case anyone’s reading this who is interested in working on it: I’m building a company/platform that does a lot of this, particularly the “metering just the right amount of water for each individual plant” part. The thing I have in mind is very low cost devices (sub-$20) with mesh radio comms, inputs to read from sensors and outputs to control irrigation, and TinyML running the devices to optimize everything in rea…

This sounds like the optimum use case for LoRa, doesn't it?

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

#197

Post by tastyfreeze »

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?

I was reading that and thinking family sized farm scale. If the machines are cheaper farms can be smaller and still justify buying a machine. Asian markets have quite a few small machines for managing rice crops.

Like these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_transplanter https://sda-industries.com/equipment-parts/rice-harvester/

Compare that to "small" machines sold in the US. https://www.deere.com/en/harvesting/

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

#198

Post by algoatecorn »

tda wrote: post #53
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…

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

That's false. Homogeneity makes it easier to harvest, process, and store crops. It also drives perfect competition which brings cost down on the commodity market.

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

#200

Post by samatman »

algoatecorn wrote: post #198
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

That's false. Homogeneity makes it easier to harvest, process, and store crops. It also drives perfect competition which brings cost down on the commodity market.

Harvesting, processing, and storing, are human labor.
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