Flying Tractors Are a Window Into Farming’s Future

Awesome!

"... Farmers have been using drones over the past 20 years mainly for aerial imaging — scanning farms from the sky with cameras to map where crops are thriving and failing. Now drones are being designed for hands-on crop management: enabled to spray herbicides, insecticides and foliar fertilizers with precision, and even to distribute seeds in planting season.

 A “featherweight flying tractor” — that’s how Arthur Erickson, chief executive of manufacturer Hylio Inc., described the company’s agricultural drones. The Houston-based startup has seen demand for its drones soar over the past three years; roughly 700 of Hylio’s drones are now at work treating 700,000 acres of cropland annually ..."

AI-Guided Drones Are Opening a New Future for Farming - Bloomberg (behind paywall, here is a link to full article) AI-guided drones can spray fertilizer, apply fungicide and sow seeds with a precision that leaves traditional heavy equipment in the dust.

Credits: Human Progress Weekly Links