If in 2019 the annual cumulative sales of UAVs to protect plants reached 30,000 units, then in 2020, the annual aggregate sales volume reached 60,000 units, the Chinese Agronews aggregate writes.
Accordingly, the total amount of used UAVs to protect plants, estimated, reached 110,000 units, covering the service zone in one billion MU (15 mu equals 1 hectare) of the Earth.
Thus, agricultural drones turned from an experimental product into a means of general agricultural production.
UAV to protect the crops became a standardized agricultural instrument in some regions of China. An example is the high-mechanized region of Jiangsanjiang, where agricultural drones are treated with 90% of rice fields.
In the context of continuous growth of the use of agrodrons, the cost of a unit per mu continues to decline.
If you take as an example Eastern region of Heilongjiang, who has the largest amount of applications in China, in five years from 2016 to 2020 the unit price has decreased from 8 yuan per MU to 2.5 yuan per mu.
With the popularization of the sowing aeromanes, surveyed from the air became the main task of UAV, except for making fertilizers, spraying and even feeding pond fish and shrimp.
As for the spraying specifically, the Chinese agrodron to protect plants today is a system with low performance, in which the size of the droplets is usually from 100 to 200 microns, which during flight at a certain height sometimes turns into a demolition. For this reason, not all pesticides are suitable for air processing. The minuses also include breakdowns caused by exploitation at high and low temperatures.
In 2016, China had more than 200 manufacturers of agrodrons, large and small. Currently, after five years of competitive business, most of them disappeared or transferred to other industries.
The Patient Protection Industry for Plant Protection is a living example of Pareto 80 rules, showing that two leading manufacturers dominate 80% of the Chinese market of agrodrons.
The general positive point is that with the development of the market and the gradual decline in prices, the proportion of drone operators with knowledge in the field of agriculture is growing rapidly. There are already groups providing similar agrotechnical services.
An increase in the share of the use of air pesticides had an impact on the production of pesticides:
(1) On its own initiative, pesticide manufacturers began to develop water-based formulations for aircraft.
(2) Suppliers of agricultural materials are more actively involved in the use of air pesticides, moving from only suppliers in the past to a direct participant in making pesticides to the fields. Thus, suppliers of agricultural materials raised their competitiveness and loyalty of customers.
Aerial use is most popular in small land plots and for high-speed cultures. Thus, the share of corn applications increased (processing against lounge). In the southern Chinese provinces, agrodrons are also in demand for field and garden cultures.
(Source: news.agropages.com).