Agricultural drones continue to heat up, future trends

For the transformation and upgrading of traditional agriculture, drones have an unparalleled and significant role. On the one hand, drones can replace manual operations in all aspects of agricultural production such as planting, pesticide application, insect removal, and supervision, breaking the impact of terrain and weather on agricultural production, and eliminating the dilemma of the increasing shortage of agricultural labor. On the other hand, the landing of drones in the agricultural field can also promote the improvement of agricultural production efficiency and quality, and ensure the safety of agricultural production.

Based on this, at present, the majority of farmers also regard drones as the “new darling” of agricultural development. Whether it is large planters, cooperatives, family farms, and agricultural enterprises, they have begun to strengthen cooperation with drone manufacturers, which has effectively promoted the rapid landing of agricultural drones. At the same time, many drone companies have also entered the field of agricultural plant protection and other fields. Through the hot combination with market capital, a highly potential agricultural drone industry has been born.

According to relevant data, as of 2018, the market size of my country’s agricultural plant protection drones has exceeded 2.5 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 41% of the scale of industrial drones. In 2019, the market scale further expanded, doubling to about 5 billion yuan, and it is expected to further exceed 10 billion yuan in 2020. Under the fiery situation, the enthusiasm of enterprises has been greatly improved, and the dynamics of development have continued.

However, although the development and application of agricultural drones in my country are currently prosperous, there are many problems hidden behind them. As one of the emerging industries, agricultural drones need to make efforts from the following three aspects in order to achieve further development:

The first is to increase product penetration.

At this stage, due to comprehensive factors such as output, technology, price, operation, and load, the market penetration rate of agricultural drones is still in the development stage. In this context, in the future, my country needs to strengthen the innovation and upgrading of UAV technology, promote the development of functional diversification, simplify the operation process, improve the load capacity, expand product output, reduce product prices, and continue to upgrade dividend subsidies.

The second is to improve the standard specification.

At present, incidents such as drone flight disturbance, privacy theft, and human injury caused by black flying are frequent. In the application of agricultural drones, all kinds of chaos are emerging one after another. Based on this, my country needs to strengthen the construction of standards and regulations. On the one hand, through the introduction of policies and laws, improve the legal fence of drones, reduce the abuse of drones, and protect personal and social safety; on the other hand, establish relevant products and industry standards, improve product quality, regulate industry development, and avoid related issues. There was a problem.

For the mature development of the agricultural drone industry, in addition to the drone itself and various software and hardware applications, the follow-up supporting facilities are also crucial, such as talents, maintenance, insurance, etc. In this context, my country should strengthen and improve the drone service network, accelerate the construction of the drone service market, and encourage the continuous development of the drone talent training market, drone maintenance market, and drone liability insurance market. development, to promote the gradual growth and improvement of the entire ecology of drones.