Business of Agriculture March April 2019 Edition | Page 13

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Enables the flow of information for better
accountability and reduction of fraud.
How do Drones Help with Traceability?
Keeping track of how crops are sown, grown, and
harvested is a challenge for governments and financial
lenders given the fact that land holdings are often
fragmented and small in India. Drone-based data
solutions might hold the key to chronicling the journey
of the crop, because of various reasons:
Authenticity: Drone data offers a single source
of truth that provides a means for near real-
time verification for stakeholders at every level;
governments and agribusiness companies can
understand village and taluk level trends of plantation
and health to accurately estimate water consumption
and soil conditions. The farmers can make authentic
claims on crop damage and make incremental
improvements to soil management and better crop
selection.
Favourable Cost Dynamics: The cost of drone
solutions to record, measure, and monitor the entire
lifecycle of a crop from the day it is sown to the day
it is harvested is a fraction of the total costs incurred
for labour, machinery, and chemicals inputs (i.e. less
than two percent) used during the cycle. Drone data
is also a commodity with favourable marginal cost
trends as its value increases while cost decreases with
every additional flight over the same area.
For the frequency and granularity at which drone data
can be obtained in comparison with satellite data,
drone solutions offer a much more viable alternative
for week-on-week insights considering factors like
resolution and immediacy of deploy-ability.
Source: Skylark Drones solution
Drone-based Solutions
for the Community
When it comes to the pangs of the agricultural
community, issues like land ownership and insurance
claims have been chronic cripplers ingrained in the
broader system as default assumptions. Drone data
offers a viable and economical way to democratise
data in a way that addresses each of these chronic
problems.
Ease of Scalability: Drone data acquisition is a
method suited to digitise farms en-masse in the Indian
context of small landholdings (<2 ha. on average).
One drone flight of 20 minutes can digitise crop data
for up to 20-30 farms.
Drones offer
an optimal
method for
government
bodies to
digitise land
data in a way
that satisfies
timelines,
accuracy, and
authenticity
Land Ownership: Currently five percent of the
population technically lay claim to over a third of
agricultural land in the country. The reasons for the
skewed ownership claims are the reason why drone
data is currently the preferred method for large
scale digitisation of land ownership by civic bodies
across the country. Drones offer an optimal method
for government bodies to digitise land data in a way
that satisfies timelines, accuracy, and authenticity.
This allows the community to resolve disputes and
carry out rightful ownership rights at a pace that
does not lag behind government schemes or changing
ownership patterns.
Source: http://www.greatlakesdronecompany.com
Insurance: Changing climate patterns and vagaries
in the monsoon have left widespread tracts of the
country either in distress or unable to function.
Traditional mechanisms in place to process and
Business of Agriculture
| March-April 2019 • Vol. V • Issue 2
13