As drones and robots increasingly revolutionize key aspects of agriculture, WarrenUAS at Warren Community College (New Jersey) plays a key role in advancing new technologies through specialized training and hands-on work with farmers, deepening their understanding and gaining insight into new ways to meet the needs of the agricultural sector.
WarrenUAS Education Manager Adam Kyle and his team are pioneers in deepening understanding of the latest applications of drone crop monitoring, autonomous ground vehicles for targeted spraying, soil sensor technology, and the software that brings all these cutting-edge technologies together. The program's mission is to explore how new tools can optimize crop yields, reduce resource waste, and increase overall agricultural efficiency.
Amanda Moberg uses the Matrice 300 RTK for multispectral missions.
More than 75 students will enroll at WarrenUAS this year to learn how to develop, fly, maintain and use drones in a wide range of applications, from law enforcement and public works to mapping, surveying and delivery services. Students will have access to more than $5 million in drone and robotics equipment, including the latest technology in multispectral sensing and artificial intelligence data processing, all housed in a new state-of-the-art Center for Robotics and Unmanned Systems and an outdoor multi-function flight training center.
But the university has a particular focus on precision agriculture, helping students and farmers across the region explore new tools and techniques for assessing and treating their fields and crops.
Students, specialized faculty, farmers and agricultural experts (including several from other universities that collaborate with Warren UAS) work together to identify key concerns for individual farms and customize solutions on a case-by-case basis. This collaboration trains students and farmers in growing fields and builds knowledge of new technologies, making farms more successful and sustainable.
“We've built a campus that can do cutting-edge research in precision agriculture, where students and farmers can find new ways to use this technology,” said Will Austin, the campus' president, who has made Warren UAS and the precision agriculture program a priority for the campus. “We're in the midst of a paradigm shift in agriculture, and we hope this program will help build what comes next.”
Austin recently hired Kyle, one of the top graduates of the prestigious Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University drone training program, to help build a precision agriculture training initiative with other experts from Warren UAS that will not only teach the theory and techniques of operating drones on farmland, but equally importantly, work with local farmers to help both parties better understand the scope of the technology.
Adam Kyle installed an EarthScout soil monitoring unit on a local farm.
Kyle explains that through multispectral imagery, drones can not only read plant health, types and levels of potential pests and diseases, and soil moisture levels, but they can also treat specific areas with precise applications of needed herbicides, pesticides, irrigation and fertilizers.
“Not only can we easily monitor our fields for things like wildlife damage and flooding, but we also have accurate data about our fields so we can develop equally accurate strategies to help our plants thrive,” Kyle says. “And we can collect that data much faster and more accurately than traditional methods. And that allows us to refine our solutions, making them more accurate, more efficient and more sustainable.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture notes that precision agriculture involves site-specific (crop) management (SSM), which uses different techniques to manage different parts of a farmer's land.
“SSM practices combine precise global positioning with site-specific measurements, either in-field data collection (e.g., soil variables or pest infestations) or remote sensing data (e.g., from aircraft or satellites) to quantify spatially varying field conditions,” USDA reports.
“SSM resembles traditional agricultural practices, where small-scale, non-mechanized farming allows for spatially diverse processing,” they noted.
“Farmers once had detailed knowledge of every inch of each field, and because agricultural practices were primarily manual, they could easily translate that knowledge into locally specific cultural practices,” the report noted.
Austin and Kyle have a strong understanding of how technology can serve that purpose, benefiting small, independent farmers by making them more efficient and productive, improving sustainability, and enabling them to produce healthier food.
Adam Kyle places a probe that feeds data back to the EarthScout monitor.
Kyle explains that drones and other analytical technologies give farmers more precision and can use the advanced data at hand to identify what the land needs, but drones can also be used for tasks such as tracking cattle, assessing land and buildings, inspecting for wildlife damage and even delivering supplies and goods from the farm without the need for heavy machinery to tread the land.
Austin says his goal is to have students graduate with an understanding of safe and efficient drone use, the fundamentals of agriculture, and how the two fit together. Through classroom instruction combined with a new agriculture curriculum and hands-on training with the latest equipment, Austin hopes students will be able to contract with farmers to start businesses that use the technology on their land, or even consider a career in agriculture.
“We have developed a program that will benefit and support farmers who want to learn and apply this technology, and train professionals who can pursue careers in this progressive field,” Kyle says.
For Chris Schafer, Warren UAS’s highly regarded precision agriculture program provides an avenue to explore and learn about the two things he loves: drones and growing plants.
“I hope that farmers like my grandfather will be able to take full advantage of this technology. It has incredible potential to transform agriculture, enabling smallholder farmers not only in this region and this country, but around the world to produce crops in more efficient and sustainable ways.”
