Drones may become the next generation of agricultural tools to help farmers herd cattle.

Drones have become one of the most frequently used words in the past two years, because in theory it is likely to have a very wide range of applications in the future.

Logistics companies want to use drones to speed up parcel delivery, oil companies want to use drones to monitor hard-to-reach areas, and mountain patrols want to use drones to monitor wildfires.

The next application area for drones may be agriculture, where Wilbur-Ellis, a veteran American agricultural service and supplier, is testing a drone that can help farmers herd cattle.

Airplanes have a history of helping farmers farm before. Wilbur-Ellis was officially founded in 1921 as a fish oil supplier, and despite its long and legendary history, not many people know about the company. This is mainly because it has always kept a low profile, deliberately maintaining its identity as a private company, thus avoiding the attention of Wall Street.

The company has been doing business in what it does best, that is, providing solutions for farmers. The company earns more than $3 billion a year from selling agricultural and industrial products such as animal feed, seeds, fertilizers and machinery, as well as providing consulting, pesticide management and other agriculture-related services.

However, the company has been trying to capture new business opportunities through strategic investment. One of its tasks is to explore the specific role of emerging technologies that have the potential to improve agriculture.

With the help of this task, the company has not only increased its revenue, but also maintained a fairly stable profitability for nearly a century. The company is currently testing UAV technology to find new ways to help farmers through UAV technology in the future.

Earlier this year, the company received a reply from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approving the commercial use of drones it is testing in South Dakota. Wilbur-Ellis does not make drones of its own. The drones it uses are AgDrone, developed by Oregon startup Honeycomb.

The drone, which is battery-powered and equipped with a vision camera and a spectral imaging camera, can be used for mapping and finding crop problems.

Wilbur-Ellis will first use AgDrone to conduct on-site surveillance and generate chemical formula maps based on plant health.

In this way, it can identify specific areas that need to be treated, thereby helping farmers save money and reduce the amount of chemicals sprayed on the land. This is just one of the potential applications that use new drones to help improve agricultural efficiency.

Having said that, the application of drones in agriculture is just beginning. Moreover, the cost of the drone itself is as high as $15000, and the annual cost for data processing is about $6000 per UAV. These expenses are incurred by HoneyComb, so the actual cost for farmers may be higher, because if Wilbur-Ellis eventually launches drone technology services, it may act as a dealer in it.

However, if the results of drone tests show that farmers can use drone technology to identify crop areas to be processed and reduce the area of land governance, helping farmers save money and increase crop yields at the same time, then it will become a very useful agricultural technology.

Wilbur-Ellis hopes to find the latest technology that can help farmers improve their income so that the company can continue to maintain stable profitability. As a result, Wilbur-Ellis is willing to test the new technology before drones are widely available.