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Plant Protection UAV

Plant protection unmanned aerial vehicles are used for agricultural, forestry and plant protection operations. This type of unmanned aircraft consists of a flying platform (fixed wing, helicopter, multi-axis aircraft), navigation flight control, and spraying mechanism It consists of three parts, through ground remote control or navigation flight control, to achieve spraying operation, you can spray medicine, seeds, powder, etc.

Compared with traditional plant protection operations, UAV plant protection operations have the characteristics of accuracy, efficiency, environmental protection, intelligence, and simple operation. In addition, due to the small size, light weight, convenient transportation and flexible flight control of plant protection UAVs, Both plots and crops have good applicability.

Plant protection drones have undergone two major development processes. The domestic plant protection drone industry started in 2008. Some domestic companies developed oil-powered helicopters for agricultural plant protection. However, the development of plant protection drones is in its infancy. The price of plant protection drones is high, their performance is unstable, mass production has not been achieved, and users cannot achieve profitability. The number of plant protection drones is low and the operating area is small. In 2016, plant protection drones began to develop rapidly, and important drone manufacturers have stepped in successively, bringing rapid improvements in product performance and cost-effectiveness. The sales volume of equipment has increased year by year, and the operating area has maintained substantial growth. Policy support and purchase subsidies are given at the national level. Various operating standards, industry standards, quality standards, and professional standards have been introduced one after another to standardize the development of the industry.

Policies encourage the development of plant protection drones. As early as March 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs mentioned for the first time at the National Agricultural Mechanization Work Conference that plant protection drones were included in the pilot program for agricultural machinery subsidies. In September 2017, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Finance, and the Civil Aviation Administration jointly issued the "Notice on Carrying out the Pilot Work on the Application of Agricultural Machinery Purchase Subsidies to Guide the Standard Application of Plant Protection Unmanned Aircraft". Guiding Opinions on Development. In March 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance jointly issued the “Notice on Doing a Good Job in the Pilot Program of Subsidies for the Purchase of New Agricultural Machinery Products from 2018 to 2020”, clearly expressing the need to encourage the development of drones in the field of plant protection Innovation to promote the development of the plant protection drone industry.

The commonly used agricultural plant protection UAVs in China mainly include "Skyhawk-3", "Z-3", DJI "MG-1", single-rotor "CAU-WZN10A" and multi-rotor "3WSZ-15". Low-altitude and low-volume plant protection drones have developed rapidly. According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, as of May 2016, there are 178 types of agricultural drones in use across the country, which can be applied to different application conditions.

The "2016 China UAV Industry Research Report" released by iResearch predicts that the agricultural, forestry and plant protection UAV market will reach 20 billion yuan by 2025. Although it once became one of the hottest investment tracks in the high-tech industry in the capital market in 2015, the coverage rate of plant protection drones in China’s farmland was only 2%, which is nothing compared to the 40-50% coverage rate achieved in Japan. Humans and machines are not popular in China's agricultural industry.

With the current shortage of rural labor, the spraying of pesticides is in urgent need of "machines". One of the most troublesome problem is the expensive local labor. The labor cost can increase by 10-15% every year. Almost all local young people go out to work. During busy periods of pesticide and fruit harvesting, the elderly at home Often find people from other counties or resort to the labor market. In areas with scattered farmland and rugged terrain, other agricultural machinery such as tractors are not suitable for operation.

Among the 2-3% of farmers who purchase drone services, they mainly value drone plant protection services that are more advantageous in terms of price than manpower. In the plant protection drone market, plant protection services serve as an intermediate link between plant protection drone manufacturers and farmers. After purchasing or leasing the drone products from the upstream, they invest a certain amount of manpower and pesticide costs to spray for farmers.

According to survey data from the China Agricultural Aviation Plant Protection Association, in 2016, only 10% of the plant protection teams across the country reached a revenue balance. This is in sharp contrast with the 20 billion market cake. The company's operating costs were too high, trading high-priced manpower for farmers' low-cost manpower. Many people in the industry are discussing the agricultural market suitable for the development of plant protection drones. At the same time, they pointed out that the development of this industry chain is not balanced. Both upstream manufacturers and farmers are enjoying market dividends, except for the intermediate link of plant protection services. The loss is serious. Plant protection drones used as a typical sample show that the choice of agricultural areas is a key factor in determining whether they can be profitable.

The plant protection services need to invest in the manpower of aircraft operators and management personnel, which requires personnel wages, carriage fees, accommodation fees, Fuel costs, etc. Most farmers are reluctant to spend money, and pilots who have undergone a series of training in drone manipulation and farmland operations are a higher-priced human resource than the young labor in rural areas. During non-agricultural busy periods, a company does not have any source of income and still has to pay plant protection team salaries.

From a technical perspective, many industry veterans believe that it is suitable to promote different types of plant protection drones in different agricultural areas. Small and medium-sized drones flying in Xinjiang and Datian in Northeast China are difficult for small and medium-sized plant protection aircraft to cover the entire area. Such models usually have low daily operating capabilities, which directly leads to low daily turnover. In order to pursue a large daily total operating area, a large number of drones and operators are required , Inevitably increase the purchase cost, battery cost and labor cost, which directly leads to a reduction in profitability. At present, multi-rotor drones are the main models in the plant protection market.

One solution is to serve small farms with high economic value, where farmers are more willing to pay high prices for plant protection services. Many companies have cost misunderstandings. Compared with multi-rotor drones, unmanned helicopters are more suitable for plant protection operations, although they are more expensive. Helicopters are suitable for many types of farmland, and can serve different crops in areas with different climatic conditions in different periods.

Jifei Technology was established in 2007 and entered the plant protection drone market for 3 years. According to official website information, as of October 2016, Jifei Agriculture has an operating area of ??over 2 million mu in 14 provinces across the country. DJI Innovation is the world leader R&D and manufacturer of unmanned aerial vehicle control systems and unmanned aerial vehicle solutions. As a complete drone manufacturer, it entered the market in 2015 with the first plant protection drone MG-1.

Compared with other brands in the market, the number of plant protection teams signed by the two companies is increasing rapidly. Jifei Agriculture's plant protection drone service team has more than 800 people, and 200 companies have been registered on the plant protection team platform established by DJI Innovations. Cao Nan, sales director of DJI's plant protection market, said that according to incomplete statistics in 2016, DJI accounted for 70% of the number of new plant protection machines in the country. He also said that from early March to the end of April 2017, DJI added plant protection. The number of machines reached 60% of 2016.

The two companies currently have slightly different market strategies, but both are less and less involved in the plant protection service market. Since 2016, Jifei Technology has transformed from a direct plant protection service to a complete machine supplier and plant protection service.

Efforts to develop the plant protection service market, should extend it from manufacturers to plant protection services, and allow the plant protection team to feed back the first-line operation requirements to the manufacturer, which is conducive to the iteration and improvement of plant protection drone technology.

Jifei Technology believes that the key to cost control for plant protection drone operations is to improve the intelligence of the equipment. On the one hand, it can improve the operation efficiency. For example, one person can control multiple equipment to operate at the same time, and the daily operation volume is greatly increased. The labor cost of the area can be reduced; on the other hand, the expansion of the operation scene, night operation, fruit tree mode operation and other scenes, expands the business scope of the plant protection team, and reduces the employment cost of farming slack time.

For large-scale farmland operations in Xinjiang and Northeast China, Jifei Technology claims that “the area of ??pesticide application is more profitable for nature”. The larger the plot, the higher the requirement for precise spraying, and the more obvious the advantages of plant protection drones. After land transfer and large-scale operation, the plots that require precise spraying are more suitable for plant protection drone operations. This is also the reason why Jifei Technology is working hard to help confirm land rights and promote land circulation.

DJI Innovations firmly believes that manufacturers' industrial chain management capabilities are the key factor in reducing service costs. The agricultural industry chain has long upstream and downstream and many related industries. The company is cooperating with plant protection service providers, land contractors, financial companies and other partners to cover the entire industry chain of plant protection drones.