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25 years of Cattle Country means the Manitoba Beef Producers archive is full of unique stories and photos. Each week throughout 2023 MBP will be sharing some of the most interesting content that was published. February 2018
UAVs can be a useful tool but know the rules before you fly By Angela Lovell
There are lots of exciting, potential uses for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in agriculture, and researchers, ag consultants, producers and others in the industry are just beginning to understand what they are. Researchers at Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives (MBFI) research farms are using UAVs to help analyse things such as pasture plant health and growth.
A drone landing at the Manitoba Beef and Forage Initiatives Brookdale farm in August 2017.
For the average beef producer, however, uses may be a bit more limited because there is a definite learning curve around flying UAVs and interpreting the data they potentially can collect. The most basic use for a UAV might be checking the cattle out in the fields to see where they are, but add a few sensors and it could be used to check vegetation health and productivity using a process called NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) which uses different light spectrums to measure the difference in vegetation that the naked eye cannot see. “You could use a UAV with another type of sensor to look at thermal imaging that measures heat,” says Steven Hills, an instructor at Assiniboine Community College who has been assisting researchers at MBFI on some of their projects and demonstrated a UAV for producers attending MBFI’s Summer Pasture Tour on August 30. “There’s some research that’s in it’s very early stages in the U.S. where they are looking at changes in animals’ body temperatures at time of calving, which might be a way in the future to keep track of when cows are about to calve.” UAV or Satellite? With UAVs providing a lot of the same imagery that satellites provide, why would a producer decide to choose one over the other? A lot boils down to turnaround time, says Hills. “Satellite imagery is only captured as the satellite goes over, and if there are clouds or it’s a rainy day you might not get a good image at that particular moment,” he says. “That satellite might not pass over that particular area again for 15 or 20 days due to the tasking and the orbit patterns, whereas a UAV can fly at any time and take some imagery when you want it and the conditions are perfect.”