Farmers are turning to swarms of drones as labour costs soar

Drones are also a burgeoning tool in so-called precision agriculture, a method of farming designed to apply treatments only to sections of fields that need it, in order to minimise waste. — Image by user6702303 on Freepik

Farmers are increasingly deploying drones to spray their fields as growers look for alternatives to tight labour markets and heavy machinery that can knock over crops.

While traditional land-based tractors and crop-dusting airplanes can still deliver larger amounts of herbicides or other crop chemicals, drones hovering over fields are less disruptive to developing plants during the growing season.