EU agricultural co-operative Copa & Cogeca have underlined the crucial role of using drones in agriculture as an additional agronomic tool.
It can help to enhance resource efficiency, productivity and profitability as well as ensure greater sustainability.
At the high-level event in the Netherlands entitled 'European Space Solutions: Bringing Space to Earth', Copa & Cogeca underlined upcoming challenges for the agriculture sector, notably to produce more with limited resources to feed a growing world.
And here, digitally enhanced agriculture, precision farming automated vehicles, robots, drones, informatics, satellite imaging, remote sensing have the potential to play a major role.
In particular, precision agriculture offers great opportunities in terms of minimizing inputs and maximizing productivity, providing a whole new farm management approach.
The use of drones in agriculture shows great potential.
In combination with other “smart” techniques, drones can contribute to enhanced resource efficiency, productivity and profitability as well as greater sustainability, contributing to the fight against environmental damage.
They are currently used to complement traditional remote sensing techniques and enable farmers to monitor nutrients in the soil and herd monitoring.
Copa & Cogeca have consequently welcome the EU Commission proposal on the revised of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) that will bring an EU wide set of rules set to be agreed very soon by EU Ministers.
But Copa & Cogeca believe that it is crucial to strike the right balance between regulation and innovation and ensure that prescriptive rules are proportional to the complexity of the operation.
