The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
There is no question that using aerial sprays through drones in applying fertilizers and pesticides in expansive areas could cut costs and would be more efficient.
However, it would spread the toxic substances much faster than the traditional manual spraying and scattering of these chemicals.
Hence,more farm families would be reporting respiratory illnesses and other health issues in the coming years as winds can spread these inputs faster than usual.
The Department of Agriculture, in its bid to modernize and mechanize the sector, is encouraging organized and clustered farmers to rent drones during their planting procedures, instead of hiring farm hands that could do the work slower and would be more costly in terms of daily wages.
In fact, under the DA’s Masagana Rice Industry Development Program, inbred seeds can also be more economical to spread via drones than transplanting them manually.
MIRDP Director for Technology Dr. Glenn Estrada told Business Mirror that using drones for fertilizer and pesticide application in rice farming can lower production costs and boost farm efficiency.
Estrada explained that most farmers into transplanting normally spend around P10,000 to P12,000 per hectare using traditional knapsack sprayers.
“(That amount)s just the labor cost for one crop establishment,” Estrada told reporters during a recent press conference.
“The full application of drones, including crop establishment, fertilizer application, pesticide, and other chemicals application is estimated at P8,000 (per hectare),” he added,
Estrada said the agency will also provide farmers with a P2,000 voucher subsidy when availing the service. With this, he said local tillers could save about P4,000 per hectare.
He also shared that drone technology could bolster farmers’ productivity in terms of application.
“In manual labor, it will take you half a day to finish one hectare. For the drones, we can have it [done] in 10 to 15 minutes. It’s that efficient,” Estrada said.
The drone initiative is part of the Drones4Rice Project of the DA National Rice Program (DA-NRP), which aims to standardize the protocols for drone applications of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides for rice production in the country.
Estrada shared the project’s initial target to have 150,000 hectares nationwide use drone technology for farming, which is “a small fraction” of areas out of the 4.8 million hectares being cultivated in the country.
“For us to initially approach all these farmers’ groups to really look into and appreciate this technology, we have demonstrations nationwide,” he said.
Estrada said farmers with 20,000 hectares of farmland have already signified their interest in the project, which will unreel in the dry cropping season of 2024 to 2025.
The Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (FPA) said it will develop a set of protocols, standards, and monitoring for drone use in agriculture.
It said that despite the availability of drones in the country, and regulations for their use in place, “additional work is needed to reduce regulatory constraints, standardize operations, develop digital precision agriculture (PA) tools, and scale up the adoption of these technologies.”
The FPA noted that the guidelines should be complied with by drone controllers, operators, technicians, service providers, pesticide companies, and pesticide end-users.
This includes but is not limited to private and public research institutions, state universities and colleges (SUCs), other government agencies, and Local Government Units (LGUs), engaged in the business of drone spraying of agricultural pesticides and other agricultural chemicals to control pests and diseases. (RDLC)