Farmers’ pilot project using drone technology
A pilot project is currently being developed which would help farmers enhance their farming practices and get better results.
This is coming from the Owner of Caribbean Aerial Photography, David Lewis who spoke with The Barbados Advocate on the sidelines of the Inaugural Weekend Law Conference under the theme of ‘Keep Up! Law and Innovation’ recently at the Hilton Barbados Resort.
He said that his drone operating company is working with the farmers on this project which would focus on a number of areas such as finding areas in their crops that need to be rectified like how to control pests from invading and destroying their crops.
“Yes, actually we are working in a pilot project right now. We are working with between four to six farmers to help them to increase their yields at the end of their crop maturity. So as I said different areas from irrigation to identifying growth rates to identifying if there are any sick areas in the actual crop and also things like infiltrates and weed infiltrates and the types of weeds and many different aspects. As I said, it is a pilot project, it is a growing project and we are looking at it very carefully right now.”
Lewis, who is a pharmacist by profession, stated that some of the other projects that his company works on includes working on real estate projects and working with tourism stakeholders in order to take beautiful photographs of this island from different angles in order to promote the island to potential visitors.
“We would do aerial photography for mostly real estate… we do a lot of image collection; we work in tourism to help to show Barbados from a different perspective, how beautiful it really is; we are also capable of offering services for search and rescue should it be necessary; accident scene reporting. We do mapping, we work in agriculture to help farmers with the best practices for planting and irrigation and also to help them with their crops and helping them to identify if there are sick areas in the crops. The use of drones are not singular, like how people think, ‘oh there are just for real estate.’ No.”
They have also helped in missing persons cases in the past.
“Well, with missing persons, we have already helped with missing persons. We have had two instances of missing persons that we tried to help with. Fortunately, for one it turned out well, for the other one, it didn’t turn out so well.”