The effectiveness of using and scaling up the practice of using agrodrones in agriculture was considered at a meeting in the Government chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Serik Zhumangarin, primeminister.kz reports.
International experience of agrodrones application in more than 100 countries of the world shows significant advantages of using unmanned aerial vehicles instead of ground-based spraying equipment. More than 500 million hectares of fields have already been treated with the help of agrodrones in the world. Due to minimal water consumption, it has been possible to save about 210 million tonnes of water and reduce CO2 emissions by 25 million tonnes. Agrodrones make it possible to cultivate and explore land in hard-to-reach places. They work in any weather and time of day, during rain and at night.
To give you an example, a self-propelled sprayer spends 150 litres of water per hectare, that's about 750,000 litres of water for 5,000 hectares. While a drone needs 50 thousand litres to treat the same amount of area, this is more than 15 times less. In addition, a self-propelled sprayer crushes the track during operation, causing the farmer to lose about 6% of the crop. TheUAV does not cause such damage to crops," Sanzhar Nurgazinov, a representative of a company that operates agrodrones, said at the meeting.
To scale up the use of UAVs for inspection, pest control and dangerous plant diseases in Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Agriculture signed a memorandum with the Chinese company Eavision to import 80 agrodrones. These vehicles will be sold among agricultural producers. In addition, a joint Kazakh-Chinese enterprise Sunkar Eavision International LLP has been established, which will assemble domestic drones in the FEZ of the Alatau Information Technology Park.
Together with the SPK of the regions, the issue of opening demonstration and service centres for agrodrones in Turkestan, Taraz, in the regions of Abay and Zhetysu has been worked out. The issue of training of assemblers and pilots on the basis of three educational institutions: Talgar Polytechnic College, College of IT-technologies in Semey and Agricultural College in Kaplanbek village of Turkestan region," Deputy Minister of Agriculture Yermek Kenzhekhanuly noted.
At the same time, work is underway to create the software needed to survey pest infestations and carry out treatments. It is envisaged to link the survey activities with the conducted treatments in the Kazakhstan Garysh Sapary information system GIS "PhytoKZ".
Serik Zhumangarin set a task for the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry to study the possibility of developing its own software for agro-industry management.
Following the meeting, Serik Zhumangarin instructed the Ministry of Agriculture to develop a roadmap for the development and implementation of agrodrones in agriculture by the end of February 2025, taking into account the selection or development of the necessary software, the creation of service centres, training of specialists, mainly from rural youth, to work with UAVs; KazAgroFinance to work out measures to support agrarians to purchase agrodrones within the available funds.
This information may not be reproduced without reference to Kazakhstan Today. Copyright of materials of News Agency Kazakhstan Today.