'Flying tractors' are a window into farming’s future

The "aerial acrobats" – seen here in use in Thailand – use less than a tenth of the energy of ground tractors. (Image: Getty)

Bloomberg

Sun, 07 May 2023

By Amanda Little Early one recent morning in Vidalia, Georgia, third-generation farmer Greg Morgan launched an AG-230 drone carrying 30 litres of fungicide over a field of sweet onions. The chemical, which is essential to crop survival in this humid state, would typically be dragged and dripped from a 1,900-litre tank behind Morgan’s 4.5-tonne tractor. Now it fell in a fine mist from the spray jets of a 36kg drone scudding 3 metres above his cash crop.Vidalia onions are a US$150 million (NZ$240m) local industry that, like p...

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