A Higher Perspective

Delivering actionable intelligence for precision agriculture.

- Patrick Sherman

Precision agriculture is among the most frequently cited applications for drone technology over the next few years. In minutes, a drone can deliver results that would have taken months to get from a satellite in decades past—and with unprecedented precision: down to the level of an individual plant or even an individual leaf. As a commercial drone operator looking for additional work, precision agriculture is a potential revenue stream with nearly unlimited potential. Crops are literally everywhere. The driest state in the nation, Nevada, has nearly six million acres in production, yielding a harvest of $600 million each year.

If you’re anything like us here at the Roswell Flight Test Crew, however, agriculture has always seemed like a fraught proposition: It requires specialized, expensive sensors and relies on arcane types of analysis, like Normalized Diff erence Vegetation Index (NDVI)— whatever that means. My perception started to change when I met Dr. Gregory Crutsinger and he showed me how to do precision-agriculture work with my existing fl eet of drones. Together, we headed out to the Oregon wine country and spent a couple of days fl ying over vineyards, and for the very fi rst time, I really began to understand the true potential of drones in this industry.

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