Small holder farmers are being encouraged to adopt the drone technology to spray their farms to save time and cost.
The technology takes only 15 minutes to spray an acre of land as against three hours using manual Knapsack Sprayer.
It also costs farmers ¢15.00 for each acre as against ¢50.00. This means a farmer is able to save as much as ¢35.00 on each acre of land using the drone technology. The call was made by a Team of Drone Technology Experts when they visited the Kpong Irrigation site for a demonstration of the technology.
The demonstration is part of the 2019 African Green Revolution Forum Scheduled for Today at the Accra International Conference Centre.
During the demonstration, drones were programmed to spray the rice farms of the small holder farmers there. Each drone carries a tank with agro chemicals. The product is applied to the crop via very small evenly distributed droplets. This reduces/prevents human intervention and exposure to risk is minimal.
The spraying drone has a ten litre tank volume with four nozzles that can be adjusted to cover a spray width of 3 to 6 feet.
One of the lead demonstrators of the drone technology is the Acquahmeyer Drone Tech Limited, a Ghanaian company working in the rural areas to introduce farmers to the technology. This is to help them to maximise their productivity through the use of this technology.
Another Ghanaian drone service delivery is the Ziongate Geospatial and research services. Their work is to use drone to detect diseases and other information on the farms.
The drone experts believe the adoption of digital technologies is the main way to revolutionise Agriculture.
