WA farmers use drones to manage water-damaged fields
Extensive rain in parts of Western Australia have made it difficult for farmers to access their paddocks. The wet weather has posed a challenge to fertilising grain crops, but a solution from the skies could be at hand.
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00:00A new technology taking off across the WA Wheat Belt.
00:07It's a drone that can do spraying or spreading.
00:10It takes your machine out of the paddock and stops you from getting bogged and what not.
00:15Getting bogged has become a daily event for some farmers, after more than a year's worth
00:21of rain fell in just 8 weeks on properties near Geraldton.
00:26Some farmers, like the Vlahov family, are using a drone to apply essential fertilisers
00:32and chemicals to their crops.
00:35And you basically fill it up with your spray or spread, press a button and it takes off
00:39and it just makes its own run lines in the paddock.
00:42At $40,000 each, the drones are not cheap and they cover a small amount of land compared
00:48to a tractor or a plane, but they have plenty of other advantages.
00:54You can spread mouse baits, snail and slug baits, anything from as low as a kilo per
01:00hectare wouldn't it?
01:01Yeah.
01:02Up to unlimited basically.
01:03Up to 150 a year.
01:05Three months ago, the ground in the northern wheat belt was bone dry.
01:10Now rivers are flowing out to sea and creeks are full.
01:15John Waugh operates an aerial aviation business, applying products to crops from planes.
01:23He's doubled his aircraft fleet this year, but demand from farmers with boggy paddocks
01:28is soaring.
01:29So we've currently got seven planes operating out of here at the moment, with four to five
01:34ground staff supporting that and on a day to day basis the logistics is quite big.
01:41With the skies filled with rain clouds, drones and planes, it's a season for the record books
01:47in the northern wheat belt.
01:48And farmers are hoping the records continue when their grain eventually goes in the silo.