Operational drone services for agri-food

General introduction

Through the OpsDrone project, the (technical and knowledge) barriers have been lowered for those who want to develop operational drone services for the agri-food sector. This is important because a lot of precision agriculture techniques in the field rely on aerial data collection. In the contract farming sector, insufficient such outsourcing opportunities still exist.
The researchers and partners have focused primarily on services that are scalable, guarantee a quality product, and are sufficiently adapted to the needs and operation of companies present in the agricultural sector.

Research approach

ILVO, VITO and FlandersMake have set up a logical collaboration. They identified relevant stakeholders and delineated five major challenges: image data interpretation, affordability, flight execution, implementation and sector connection. Concrete applications, such as weather damage insurance, seed and product research, follow-up and quality monitoring, addressed the challenges. In addition, companies were able to bring in other applications to achieve further acceleration.

Relevance/Valorisation

The project has demonstrated that drone services can offer significant added value to the agri-food industry. The five challenges have evolved throughout the project and although some challenges remain, developments show that drone services are becoming increasingly integrated into the sector. With improved technology, collaboration and policy adjustments, drones can play a key role in increasing efficiency, sustainability and profitability within the agri-food industry.