"Agricultural UAV Industry White Paper (2023)" released - my country's agricultural UAV application expands to new heights

Whether it is spring planting or autumn sowing, agricultural drones can often be seen flapping their wings when walking into the farmland. This has become a common scene in the development of rural industries. Data shows that during the busy farming season, more than 2 million drones take off and land over Chinese farmland every day. Drones have become an indispensable key tool in China's farmland management.

With the continuous renewal of rural industries and the continuous increase in user demand, the adaptability of drones has also been continuously expanded, providing new solutions to problems such as grain production, soil health, and environmental protection.

Agricultural machinery purchase subsidies are an important part of the central government's policy of strengthening agriculture and benefiting farmers. The purpose is to guide farmers and agricultural production and management organizations to purchase advanced and applicable agricultural machinery and improve the level of agricultural mechanization. The development of agricultural drones is also inseparable from the support of relevant policies.

Since 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, together with the Ministry of Finance and the Civil Aviation Administration, has launched a pilot project for agricultural machinery purchase subsidies, subsidizing the purchase of plant protection unmanned aerial vehicles that meet the pilot conditions. Starting from 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs will work with the Ministry of Finance to deploy a comprehensive subsidy program for the purchase of plant protection unmanned aerial vehicles. The scale of the subsidy will be determined by the agricultural and rural departments and financial departments of the pilot provinces. The scale of each pilot subsidy can exceed 10 million yuan, further strengthening financial support.

According to the data of the "Agricultural Drone Industry White Paper 2023", as of June 2024, DJI Agriculture has more than 300,000 drones, with a global cumulative operating area of ​​more than 7.5 billion mu, covering 1/3 of China's agricultural land area, and has trained 6,000 agricultural drone instructors and 300,000 agricultural drone pilots, benefiting hundreds of millions of agricultural practitioners.

After entering 2024, the agricultural drone field has once again ushered in a series of favorable policies: in February, in this year's Central Document No. 1, agricultural machinery and equipment were included in the fourth item "Strengthening Agricultural Science and Technology Support".

The booming agricultural drone industry is closely related to the staged pain points of modern agricultural development, such as energy saving, environmental protection, high efficiency, labor saving, etc.

From the perspective of energy saving. my country's agricultural water use accounts for more than 60% of the country's total water use, of which cultivated land irrigation water accounts for 86% of agricultural water use. How can the vast agricultural areas, especially the arid areas and irrigation areas, save water and increase grain, and how to tap the potential of agricultural water saving? Solving these problems is of great significance to improving my country's water resource utilization efficiency and promoting sustainable agricultural development.

Data from the "White Paper" shows that agricultural drones have operated 7.5 billion mu of land, saving a total of 210 million tons of water, which is equivalent to the annual drinking water consumption of 390 million residents; reducing carbon emissions by 25.72 million tons, equivalent to the annual carbon sequestration of 1.2 billion trees; and reducing the use of pesticides (100% off) by 47,000 tons.

In terms of promoting fertilizer and pesticide weight loss and efficiency increase, agricultural drones have also performed well. In the past, farmers mostly observed crops with their naked eyes, but drone operations are different. Before fertilizing, drones will scan the farmland at high altitude, obtain large-area multispectral images, and generate prescription maps with computers. According to this "prescription map", agricultural drones can achieve precise variable fertilization, which can increase efficiency by more than 10%, save more than 15% of fertilizer and pesticide, and achieve "weight loss" and efficiency increase simultaneously.

The continuous popularization of agricultural drones is fundamentally due to their improvement of production efficiency. With the continuous advancement of urbanization, the aging of the rural labor force is deepening, and "who will farm" has become a problem that the whole society is concerned about, and different solutions have been given. Improving agricultural mechanization is the key. From combine harvesters to agricultural drones, the development of my country's agricultural machinery industry is constantly solving the problem of labor substitution.

For example, wheat, one of my country's most important food crops, is cold-resistant and drought-resistant, and is suitable for planting in Xinjiang, but it is crucial to quickly complete fertilizer topdressing before the snow melts. DJI T60 and other drones have developed a targeted snow-melting fertilizer spreading function, which has provided strong support for the growth of crops in arid areas of Xinjiang, greatly saved water for crop irrigation, and helped farmers get rid of the dilemma of "relying on the weather for food".

Corn faces the same situation as wheat. China is one of the most important countries in the world for corn cultivation. Although the level of agricultural mechanization in corn cultivation has increased significantly in recent years, it is mainly reflected in the aspects of plowing, planting and harvesting, and the level of mechanization in the management stage is still low. Due to the high plants of corn itself and the planting scale and hilly terrain of some plots, traditional ground spraying equipment cannot be used on a large scale, which also leads to the loss of corn yield and quality.

With the continuous advancement of China's agricultural science and technology, drone technology has become an important tool for completing this modern agricultural management link, and its advantages in the mid- and late-stage operations of corn are particularly prominent. With the advantages of high-efficiency operation capacity, precise application of pesticides and fertilizers, and reduced crop damage, agricultural drones have significant advantages in the mid- and late-stage operations of corn, which not only improves the operation efficiency, but also plays a positive role in improving corn yield and quality.

In addition, the mechanization of mountain forestry and fruit industry has always been the short board of agricultural mechanization. Drones can be unrestricted by terrain and effectively solve the pain point of difficult operations in large-slope mountainous areas. After years of technical accumulation, DJI Agriculture has provided fruit tree solutions with drone-based aerial survey, AI identification, and fully autonomous operation of three-dimensional routes, and has established demonstration gardens in Hainan, Guangdong, Guangxi and other places to verify the effectiveness of drone fruit tree flight prevention. In February last year, DJI Agriculture's "Cloud Xinjiang Fruit" demonstration garden used agricultural drones to verify the feasibility of a single person challenging the full process of managing a 150-acre orchard from garden cleaning to harvesting, effectively saving 420,000 kilograms of water and reducing costs by 110,000 yuan, achieving a double harvest of efficiency and effect.

Nowadays, the busy figures of farmers in the fields are gradually decreasing, and the scenes of intensive drone operations are increasing day by day, and more and more farmers have become "new farmers". Compared with traditional manual labor, drone operations not only improve work efficiency, but also save costs and ensure the prevention and control effect. Whether it is wheat or rice and other crops, the proportion and scale of drone sowing operations are gradually expanding.

From 2023 to 2024, as more agricultural practitioners around the world use agricultural drones, managers of various governments have also gained a deeper understanding of agricultural drones and have further opened up and supported management methods, including treating agricultural drones as low-risk aircraft, providing subsidies for them as agricultural equipment, and providing agricultural drug use guidance similar to ground equipment.

In 2023, the Brazilian Civil Aviation Administration canceled the mandatory airworthiness requirements, and many models of DJI obtained airworthiness certificates; in order to better cope with the growing demand for agricultural drone approval, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) also adjusted civil aviation regulations; from 2023 to 2024, DJI users in the United States successively obtained operating exemptions...

From Guangxi Wogan to the red pine forests in the northeast, from Meitan Cuiya in Guizhou to rice sowing in South China, from durian in Thailand to agave in Mexico, looking at the world, agricultural drones are used in more and more scenarios. It is with the continuous advancement of technology and the expansion of market demand that agricultural drones have achieved continuous upgrading of application scenarios.

As a representative of my country's high-tech and new-quality productivity, agricultural drones have also exported more and more Chinese influence to overseas agricultural development. In the future, agricultural drones will surely become an indispensable part of modern agriculture and make more important contributions to global food security and agricultural production.