Farm Space: Drones
by: Lucianne Shoffner—Publisher
Emerging technology is one of the most significant issues facing the agricultural industry. Technology is influencing every aspect of agriculture to include education, big data, and the machines/robots used to manage map farmland. Farmspace Systems is on the cutting edge of technology that can help farmers work smarter, make better decisions, and bring in better yields.
The Founders of Farmspace Systems are all Veterans; Air Force and Marine Aviation, “What we wanted to do was marry aviation with this new technology,” one of the founders, General John ‘Glad’ Castlelaw, told us, “we saw that this was going to be a breakthrough in technology.” [to help feed the 10 billion people expected to be in the world by 2050]. In the military, their jobs were to collect, analyze, and then act on the data that they brought to the table. Castlelaw continued, “In precision ag, you have the same scenario, you are using satellite imagery, date, stationary sensors, scouts, just like we had scouts in the military, you have scouts in an agricultural setting that go out and look for the necessary information to see what is attacking a crop. You bring it back and act upon it.”
“That’s a long-winded way to tell you that the name, Farmspace Systems, was a redirection of our focus from military to domestic.” Glad Castellaw smiles and added. He and Derick Seaton were the two co-founders. The other primary investor in Farmspace, Jerry Dunlap, is a pharmacist who has also been an internet entrepreneur, one of the first ones in the state. That partner is also in charge of their marketing operations. Derick Seaton is in charge of safety, compliance, and operations, and Castlelaw is in charge of business development.
Aside from farming, Farmspace is being used with first responders, emergency management, law enforcement, US Coast Guard, a wide range and farming is just a part of the overall use. “You take the experience that we have and apply it to our concept and the results are incredible,” Seaton added. “I can expand on that a little bit,” Castellaw said, “One of the proposals that we have is with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) collect information, not just images, mining the internet, social media, etc., to collect info to see how well the $600 million the US spends in programs in East Africa are working, is this working, is it not working? Do we need to change this? Do we need to cancel that, How do we get better at bringing some of these support programs? The goal is to make the country self-sufficient, and if it’s not, the program is not doing its job. Either you change it, or you cancel the project .” Farmspace has partnered with a company out of Texas competing for the contract, we’ll see how it goes.“
Farmspace is also working on opportunities in the US. One of those opportunities was taking experimental crop plots and counting the number of plants on those plots. That had been done by hand and as such, was prone to human error. “With drones, the project data was collected in a very short time, and we found mistakes that humans had missed,” Seaton explained the concept. “With AI, the drones are taught to recognize a plant. The computer is shown hundreds of photos of corn, for example, what it looks like, what a healthy plant looks like, and then after the drone is able to recognize that plant, it is flown in a grid pattern over the plot of, say 1200 rows. In a very short time, the drone is able to tell you exactly how many plants are in that plot.” Crops that are evaluated include experimental Hemp at the SBX Farm at the Agricenter International. “Again, what we’re doing makes a difference, it’s here on the earth [instead of satellite] lower altitudes, a variety of temperatures, we get a wide array of data to be used.” Castellaw continued. “One of our biggest contracts is with Winfield United, which is a subordinate company of Land o’ Lakes. And what they have is a number of demonstration plots around the US, two hundred of them. In the last couple of years, we’ve flown over some of those plots located in Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Mississippi, and here in Tennessee, and right now, they have to go out and count by hand, every plant of the 1200 plots in each location. Each of those plots is five feet wide by 30 feet long. We have the capability to fly over those plots, take images of and process those images and tell Winfield how many plants are in those 1200 plots. What that does is keep them from having to do a manual count. You know, we can do something in 15 or 20 minutes what it takes someone day’s to do.” In those flyovers, Farmspace can also measure the health of those plants, in that same 15-20 minutes.
Ted Moore explained further, “Using standard RGB cameras, the drones, most notably the Phantom Four—which is the most popular drone. We created grid flights using apps for drone deploy and other apps for mission planning.” Ted continued, “So the drone takes off automatically and does a grid pattern over the field taking pictures—100s of pictures—it comes back and we put it on a stitching service that takes all of those shots to make a map of the field. Then, through a counting program that was made for us, and because the computer uses AI to tell what a plant is, we can actually give that count with confidence.”
Adding to the capability discussion, Chance Weldon continued, “We are also doing real estate, one of the big clients for that are the real estate agents. You can tell a lot more about a property when you can see the surrounding areas. Realtors like that a lot. They love to show the location’s proximity to other things that ground-level pictures or just maps won’t be able to show. For instance, just this past week I had two properties on the same stretch of street. Both of the RE developers wanted to show the businesses nearby, the restaurants, the proximity to the College [in Martin]. We are trying to market ourselves, we definitely have the equipment.”
“One of the big things for the Tennessee Air Force Association is education. We have a grant from the TN Soybean Association to help to use remote sensing systems in precision agriculture, for instance, Derick, in Decatur County, at Lone Oak Farms, the STEM program is tremendous down there, Chance and Ted did a program for them, showing them the capabilities of remote sensing, how it works, how the drones work, and then the students were allowed to fly the drones through the process of collecting information, and so forth. So right now we’re in discussions with Lone Oaks to expand that next year.”
The USDA has awarded a grant of $897,000 to the team led by Agricenter International. "It’s got folks like UTMartin Ag, Case IH, Mid America Financial, and then, well, us." Castellaw explained, "What we have here, you know, 40 percent of those who serve in the military come from a 16% of the population that is rural America. So we want to give them a reason to come back and come back so that they can pick up leadership roles in the community, the school board, run for public office in the local community, etc. But they have the skills that were developed in the military and, you know, less than 30% of all of the 16 to 24-year-olds in America can even qualify for the military, so you are already talking about the cream of the crop. When they come back, we want them to have good jobs so they can take care of their family and enjoy the lifestyle that we as American citizens enjoy. So as the Veterans come back, and want to learn more, they’ve already got the basic understanding of GPS, and how this works, and the leadership skills and capabilities they have built, add some training, and this is what this brand is going to do. And we can give them training in civilian remote sensing, and then they can take jobs in the Agricultural Service sector, and help bring on the precision agriculture that we are going to need to feed almost 10 billion people by 2050."
The class will be brought into Lone Oaks for a week, going to go through the civilian drones, sensors, going to talk about what you are looking for in plants, why it’s important to agriculture and training on some operating systems, and then they are also going to be trained on the FAA rules and regulations for operating drones and they will take a test so they can be FAA certified drone pilots.
While we have talked a lot about production agriculture, FSS is not just about row crops. They are also using the technology with livestock, checking the health of cattle, they are surveying land, working with local law enforcement, Emergency Management Associations, firefighting, forestry, waterways, power lines, they can even measure the area of a gravel or sand pile.
“We aren’t just farming, and we aren’t just drones. We are a data, intelligence, video provider of information for our clients to make an informed decision.” Seaton summed it up. "We’re doing good things for the Veteran community, for industries, and for farmers."
In five years, the company expects to go international, South Africa, South American, Europe. In the next five years, we expect to expand out of the Mid South and Delta regions, Middle and East Tennessee.