Starter Kit. Idea 289 of 500. Cluster 14
Agricultural drone services: spraying, mapping and counting, sold per acre
The mechanism, from the book
The smallholder sells raw to a collector at the gate and the collector sells to a packer who puts his own name on it. Denmark's farmers got rich the day they owned the creamery.
The first step
Hire a mapping drone and a licensed pilot for one day and map three paddy or plantation fields free, in exchange for the farmer's permission to show the result. Take the maps to a plantation manager and a farmers' society and quote a per-acre price for mapping, counting and spraying. A booking at that price is the proof, and the questions they ask tell you which service to lead with.
- Who pays first
- A plantation manager who needs trees counted and fields surveyed quickly, and pays per acre rather than buying a drone.
- What leaves today
- Farms guess where pests and dry patches are, so yield is lost that a map and targeted spraying would have saved.
Ask first
- Department of Agriculture. Ask whether spraying by drone is allowed for the chemicals farmers use now.
- the Divisional Secretariat. Ask whether drone work over farmland needs any local permission.
Check before you spend
Whether drone flights over farmland need a licence for the pilot and the aircraft, and what spraying rules apply near homes and water.
Find out these three numbers
- What do farmers pay per acre for spraying by hand now?
- How many acres can a drone cover in a day?
- What does a drone and pilot cost per day?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.