Introduction
Agriculture, robust and the most important industry. It employs 12,5% of the entire earth's population, and recently has even started replacing fossil fuels with biofuels, but what counts the most, it feeds us.
Annually the world produces 2,7 billion tons of cereals, 1 billion tons of oil crops and 2,1 billion tons of sugar crops. That doesn’t come for free, it requires huge amounts of human labor, machines, fossil fuels and water input.
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How are they doing so?
Farmers utilize natural gas to make fertilizers, which are then used together with pesticides and herbicides by huge sprayers for plant treatment. These sprayers require unsustainable amount of fossil fuel to function and what’s more, waste good deal of water in the process.
What are the consequences?
Agriculture was responsible for 4.6 billion tons of CO2 in 2018 alone, agricultural irrigation accounts for 70% of annual water use worldwide, and this number is increasing, as with each passing year more and more land is transformed for agricultural purposes.
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However, the process of treating crops is absolutely essential as it protects plants from weeds, insects and diseases. And it is one of the main reasons we were able to reach current level of production. Yet all of this has put a huge burden on our planet.
We want to change that
We believe that technological progress will be the answer to many problems, including the biggest issues our society faces right now, pollution, global warming and problems connected to population growth. Our solution is to use newest technology to amend environmental and production issues by replacing heavy machinery with agricultural drones in spraying operations, where chemicals against weed, insect and diseases are applied.
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Our goal is to utilize gathered funds and conduct agro operations using drones on land area of 10 000 hectares belonging to several European farmers that we partnered with this year.
Why drones?
Compared to regular sprayers, drones use 15 times less water for spraying operations. This means that while regular sprayer uses around 150 liters (39,6 gallons) of water to spray land area of 1 Hectare (2,4 acre), drones only have to use 10 liters to achieve the same result.
In addition, while regular sprayers consume on average 5-10 liters of fuel per 1 Hectare, drones run on electricity, which will allow us to reduce agricultural impact on global warming, pollution and push for so needed move to renewable recourses in this sector.
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Sprayers stand in farmer's way to fully use land
Traditional sprayers also destroy crops while driving through the field and conducting spraying operations, leaving behind rails of crushed plants.
Wheat fields suffer most from it. The crop is sown in high density, as this plant doesn’t need much space. When sprayer passes by, it crushes plants and leaves behind rails of wasted area, which decreases harvested amount by 5%
Sunflower and other oil crops are affected by this as much as wheat. Corn does not get damaged that much, as corn plant needs more space around to properly grow, and it gives farmers space to position sprayer so it destroys less, however even then the final harvest is reduced by 2-3%.
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Eliminating this with flying drones means an increase in metric tons harvested from 1 hectare by about 3-5%, depending on crop type. This can help with issues that come along with growing population, particularly increased food demand.
Drones decrease chemical overdose
Drones also allow local problem detection using cameras with NDVI technology. This means finding and isolating diseases and weeds, and treating the problem locally. Farmers, upon detecting such problem, spray the whole field, even areas that do not require treatment, which often creates undesirable chemical overdose. That can affect the amount of harvested crop and its quality.
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Although the idea of using drones for agricultural purposes has been around for a couple of years, it hasn’t yet been implemented on any significant scale, as farmers still rely on conventional methods. We want to change that, and push for innovation in the direction of environmental protection and efficiency
What we want to do
By partnering with farmers in Italy, Czech Republic and Ukraine, we'll treat 10 000 Hectares of crops with drones. In Italy, spraying operations will be conducted on vineyards, while in Czech Republic and Ukraine we will be treating fields with wheat, sunflower and corn.
Environmental effects
By treating 10 000 hectares without having to deploy conventional machinery, we are going to save 7 000 000 liters of water, 6 900 barrels of oil and harvest 3000 more tons of wheat, hoping to at least double these numbers in 2023 with new farmers from all around the world.
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Your input
Participating in this campaign you help us achieve goal of 10 000 hectares and show farmers that we can grow our food in sustainable way, without need of crude oil extraction for machinery and pollution of our air, and what's just as important, without wasting our most important recource on the planet, water.
