What Niche's Lend Themselves to Working With Smaller Companies?

[Consultant]

I read somewhere that anyone looking to offer services to farmers should go through an Agricultural Consultant since most farms already have a relationship with one?

I would assume most major/large farming operations already have in-house or sub-contracted aerial data collection services in place with strong relationships.

What is the current status of the average smaller operation? What percentage of them are using drones and how are they using them? Are they using contractors? Is there a handful of existing major service providers providing 90% of the services to 90% of all farmers who want it? Or is it highly localised to the point many smaller farmers are hiring individual pilots or very small aerial photography companies?

Are there niches that are growing faster than others, such as Vineyards?

 

[Cobs]

I know plenty of farmers but dont know any that ask for aerial data services nor have much of a need for one so my advice would be - get your business card posted to them just incase they ever do

 

[Jrods]

I started just this year I have had 15 customers all with over 600 acres each. Most are large fields over a mile long. Started by working with some hunters wanting to get permission to remove some wild pigs, but the farmer would not allow them in the field unless they could show him that his crop was being damaged. During the summer I flew each field once a week and posted the the video to a drop box. Where the farmer and the hunters could review the video. If I saw any damage I would promptly call the farmer and let him know.
I have 13 of the original 15 signed up for next year starting just prior to planting and ending during harvest. The two I lost where smaller farmers, one purchase his own drone the other is in a area that did not have any damage this year.

 

[ExcObs1]

I've found most local farming ops are joined at the hip with the area university/extension agency, many of which are woefully behind in this technology. But I guess you get what you pay for

 

[BigAl07]

Excellent ideas here. *following*

 

[CTMIAMI]

I'm a "small" farmer 20 acres of avocado trees in Homestead. I could not find any decent service to do this for me so I purchased a phantom 4 and inspect the grove from the air and take photos or video to view at home. I would have gladly pay for the service but there is not much demand for it in my area. I'm probably the only avocado grower using a drone to inspect for Laurel Wilt disease. On my first fly I detected a few sick trees and that alone allow me to intervene quicker. It paid for itself on the first flight

 

[ExcObs1]

You are forward thinking and ahead of most "small" farmers.

I've spent the last 30 years working for Verizon Communications (telephone/data service/fios) not wireless.

When it comes to technology advances, you learn to grab on and let it pull you along or pick yourself up and look around for the truck.

"Scaling" this technology to small farmers is what my goal and mission statement is.

You found a simple picture from a different perspective valuable.

Recently, I had a discussion (short) with a 50 acre vineyard owner in North Florida that I was simply looking to provide a FREE service of some NIR (NDVI) and RGB images for, just to see if they could be used in any beneficial way. Not even interested in the slightest.

The ironic thing was, the previous week the local Farm Bureau had a speech contest in which the topic was "How can you integrate SUAS's in your farming operations and the benefits"

Kudos to you!!

 

[CTMIAMI]

I do think ahead. Laurel Wilt is killing hundreds of avocado trees every month in my area. Crucial to the management of the disease in a grove is rapid intervention, removal of the trees and roots. The air view is excellent for it. I know that there has to be a signature Pre-visible wilt that would even be more useful, but no one has it so far. I fly my grove every 15 days or so to see if I spot any wilting trees.
One drone company passed by our association meeting and said they could work with the 4K movies to get a pre wilt signature. I did called them but never heard back from them
If you don't catch it early and let the tree wilt and sit there, root transmission of the disease begins to take place and that is really hard to control and you can loose a lot of trees before it gets control, if controlled at all.

 

[ExcObs1]

NIR imaging (NDVI) or even thermal may yield early clues.

Stressed or diseased plant/leaves reflect less green and NIR light.

Some of the family has orange groves which have been devastated by the greening disease.

I've spent some time playing around w/NIR/NDVI at the grove.

NDVI1

• ExcObs1
• Oct 15, 2016

NDVI is generally a variance view of what could be considered a complete ground cover crop such as corn, at a large field perspective.

I'm still working at what yields a stichable mosaic altitude and overlap wise. Obviously, this altitude is too high for any useful info.

 

[jlazz447]

Great info... just need that 107 Cert. now >_<

 

[BigAl07]

NIR imaging (NDVI) or even thermal may yield early clues.

Stressed or diseased plant/leaves reflect less green and NIR light.

Some of the family has orange groves which have been devastated by the greening disease.

I've spent some time playing around w/NIR/NDVI at the grove.

NDVI1

• ExcObs1
• Oct 15, 2016

NDVI is generally a variance view of what could be considered a complete ground cover crop such as corn, at a large field perspective.

I'm still working at what yields a stichable mosaic altitude and overlap wise. Obviously, this altitude is too high for any useful info.

How did I miss this update to this thread????

Great work. This gives me some great ideas.

 

[russbarger]

Is anyone working with cattle producers? Namely with an app that inventories geotagged photo s showing downed fence? Or using some kind of sound maker to here livestock?

 

[ndroll]

My husband is an agronomy supplies salesman with a multi-state company. We just got into drone flying last summer and ever since I've been thinking about ways to make some money in the field. Around here, we have some farmers who have bought drones, but it seems like they don't really know what they should utilize them for. I asked my husband why drone crop health inspection doesn't really seem to be taking off and he said that most of the agronomy business utilizes satellite imagery. I also think that farmers just haven't been shown a real good use case for them to justify the extra cost of hiring someone or even doing it themselves. Also, many people are just not tech savvy and don't want to be. My brother installs and services gps units in farm equipment and as much as the farmers love it, many just don't understand how to use it properly. They would rather just call someone to get it all set up for them and they take off for the field with their iPads watching videos while the tractor drives

 

[FCEAgtech]

So this is imagery captured by a Sentera single NDVI+ that we were able to quicktile and view right at the edge of the field. This is the raw image, prior to any stitching or alterations to the NDVI scale in SMS. Half this field received a timely fungicide application, half did not (corn). Make a guess which received the fungicide. To get to the original post. In my area, most of this imagery is offered through ag retailers. I don't see alot of opportunity for stand-alone imagery services in ag at this point. However, I am sure that the "I" states provide a better opportunity to contract out to growers... providing the data to agronomists.

 

[FCEAgtech]

NIR imaging (NDVI) or even thermal may yield early clues.

Stressed or diseased plant/leaves reflect less green and NIR light.

Some of the family has orange groves which have been devastated by the greening disease.

I've spent some time playing around w/NIR/NDVI at the grove.

NDVI1

• ExcObs1
• Oct 15, 2016

NDVI is generally a variance view of what could be considered a complete ground cover crop such as corn, at a large field perspective.

I'm still working at what yields a stichable mosaic altitude and overlap wise. Obviously, this altitude is too high for any useful info.

For stitching, I'm using a Sentera NDVI+ and incident light sensor, flown at 300ft with 75% overlap and sidelap

 

[Consultant]

In my area, most of this imagery is offered through ag retailers. I don't see alot of opportunity for stand-alone imagery services in ag at this point.

This statement begs the question, what area are you in and please give some specific examples of what types of retailers you are talking about? Maybe an additional important question is, is the data being acquired by employees of these retailers or are the retailers subcontracting the data acquisition out? Does the John Deere Dealer have in-house drone pilots?

 

[FCEAgtech]

This statement begs the question, what area are you in and please give some specific examples of what types of retailers you are talking about? Maybe an additional important question is, is the data being acquired by employees of these retailers or are the retailers subcontracting the data acquisition out? Does the John Deere Dealer have in-house drone pilots?

Our local JD dealer does not have an in house pilot. Retailers have in house precision ag techs (my job) and imagery is tied to all phases of precision ag -- VR fertilility and pest management, as well as hybrid placement - crop monitoring - damage assessment, etc. Nebraska panhandle. I would LIKE to be covering so many acres as to have to contract out. As of now, adoption has not necessitated this.

 

[Consultant]

Yes, there was a presentation at Interdrone and I asked the question what they guessed the percentage of farmers using drone technology was and they said.... 3%. In your opinion, what's the main reason(s) for the slow adoption?

 

[M3aerial]

Most are annoyed with the regulatory process. It's not worth it to them. I would think that those companies engaged in the services industry will eventually start to get greater recognition over time, and as companies start to shift away from trying to do it all themselves, and begin to outsource.

 

[FCEAgtech]

Yes, there was a presentation at Interdrone and I asked the question what they guessed the percentage of farmers using drone technology was and they said.... 3%. In your opinion, what's the main reason(s) for the slow adoption?

Aerial imagery is really most useful as a PART of a complete precision farming effort. They have been shown a lot of pretty ndvi pictures from satellite imagery that they may have paid for in the past and been burned by the lack of ROI. Once we put our sUAS into the toolbox here, and focused on building the value of aerial imagery as a data layer in our customers' programs, we have seen a great deal of interest in this part of our offerings. Adoption will depend on value. If all they get is a printed map, they will not adopt this tech. If what they get is an actionable data layer coupled with the expertise on how use it to complete the mosaic that will boost ROI adoption will continue to increase rapidly IMO.