In the age of technology and innovation, the Agriculture and Fisheries Ministry is on a mission to revolutionise the sector through efficiency and sustainability, and change the way Jamaicans view and approach farming.
Against this background, the Ministry’s latest investment, through the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA), entails the procurement of two Agri-Spray Drones to provide much-needed relief to farmers in irrigating their crops, which underscores the ‘Grow Smart, Eat Smart’ mantra.
Drone Manager/Senior Programmer at RADA, Hartnell Campbell, was part of a major tour of onion farms in St. Thomas on February 16, where a demonstration of one of the drones was facilitated.
The massive equipment was used by Environmental Solutions Limited to spray an approximately one-acre plot on the Careeras farm in Yallahs.
Mr. Campbell believes drone technology will greatly aid in achieving the principle of precision agriculture.
“When it comes to precision agriculture, we’re talking about knowing exactly where you have problems on the farm and then addressing just that problem alone,” he explains.
Mr. Campbell informs that the multi-spectral camera on the drone can detect issues more accurately and “[much] greater than our eyes”.
“So you would fly this over your farm, map the entire area so it can give you the actual acreage; but you will also know what is happening,” he adds, while highlighting the wide-ranging surveillance and mapping benefits to be derived from using drones.
“When we are looking at a plant and we see green, it is actually the greenlight that bounces from the plants to our eyes. This piece of machinery will actually see when that green is going away, turning brown and the plant is dying, for some reason,” Mr. Campbell outlines.
He emphasises that sprayer drones can save the farmers unnecessary expenses by preventing chemical wastage.
Mr. Campbell further informs that the equipment can spray one acre of land in 20 minutes, thus eliminating the tedious and burdensome task of farmers having to load sprayers, weighing up to 30lbs., on their backs to undertake this task on their properties.
Moreover, fruits grown at higher altitudes are more difficult to spray by human effort, while the sprayer drone makes this a simple task.
Meanwhile, RADA’s 257,000 registered farmers are being encouraged to form groups and make requests for drone services through the mobile app or by contacting their extension officers.
“We’re talking about growing smart and eating smart. That is our mantra for the Ministry right now. So, drone technology is a technology that we want farmers to adopt,” Mr. Campbell underscores.
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