In the U.S., pesticides can be applied by drone under the same rules as any other aerial application. Not so in Canada, where no ag pesticides are registered for drone application. Is that delay unfair… or smart?
Spraying crop fields by drone is a new and exciting frontier in agriculture. Yet, while the technology seems ready to fly, regulations continue to stand in the way of deployment in agricultural fields. Specifically, while it’s legal in Canada to use (with permits) drones to apply pesticides for research purposes, regulations don’t yet allow the same commercially. That limitation has many farmers frustrated.
The Case for Drones
Drones deliver a pile of clear benefits. From accessing fields even in excess moisture conditions, to mitigating compaction, to less damage to plants at application, they also deliver convenience at a competitive cost. $60,000 for a 70-litre payload aerial sprayer might sound fairly reasonable if it means a farmer doesn’t have to pay — or wait on — a commercial aerial applicator.
“For some crops, it could be a game changer. Potatoes are a perfect example,” Paul Van den Borre, Ontario senior sales rep with Eco+, a Quebec-based ag micronutrient and specialty product supplier, says.
He should know. In fact, he’s one of the relatively few Canadian ag producers who has personal experience with drone spraying’ benefits: he has been using a 10-litre drone sprayer to spray micronutrients on his demo plots for the past 18 months. (Note: while rules are strict for pesticide application, there are no similar restrictions on micronutrient application by drone).
Van den Borre says there are several key benefits to drone application. The first is obvious: no wheels crossing a field mean no compaction of the land and no crushing of plants under tires.
“Since potato growers normally don’t build in tram lines in potato fields, when you apply a fungicide using a wheeled sprayer, you just drive through the field and run over parts of your plants, causing damage and disease spread because of it. Every time you spray, you’re dragging disease around and splashing it in the sprayer track,” he says.
Drones can also give better control the depth of product penetration into a crop.
“With a drone there’s significant down draft, so it can actually push the product into the crop. The faster you go, the less penetration; the slower you go, the more penetration. And that’s different from a land sprayer and different than an aerial sprayer.”
The Current Regulatory Reality
In Canada, two main agencies control different parts of drone and pesticide use. The Pest Management Regulatory Agency (PMRA) handles regulations surrounding pesticide product approvals and their application; Transport Canada regulates vehicle movement on the ground and air, including the registration, pilot certification and safe use of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems (RPAS), more commonly known as drones. But wait, one might say, aerial application from airplanes has been permitted for decades. How different are drones? Enough, says PMRA, that drone application is not considered aerial application.
What this means is this: any company that wants to include drone application on their product label must first apply for authorization to conduct trials via drone application, then must collect multiple years of research data on the efficacy, exposure risk, residues and drift parameters of their individual product as applied by drone. Once they have those results, only then can they apply to PMRA to include drone application on a product label. It’s a time-consuming and expensive path forward but, until it occurs, drone-application for that product is considered off-label and illegal.
The regulatory process doesn’t end at the federal (PMRA) level. Individual provinces oversee pesticide licensing. To be regulated to apply products by drone, applicators will require a drone-specific operator’s license, as the provinces have confirmed that an aerial applicator’s license isn’t adequate. That’s not so easy to accomplish, since no Canadian provinces have developed a drone-specific training and licensing program yet.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., “If a product can be aerial applied via a helicopter or airplane, you’re good to go with a drone,” says Van den Borre. “It’s the Wild West.”
So Why the Delay?
Are Canada’s regulations simply a bureaucratic headache? Actually, not entirely.
Drones are significantly different than their fixed-wing or helicopter counterparts because drones, unlike airplanes and helicopters in flight, create a lot of downward-moving air. In flight speak, that air is called ‘downwash’, and it causes significant issues when it comes to the consistent application of liquid products. Where helicopters and airplanes can distribute their payload in an even and highly targeted manner, the downwash drones generate impacts the movement of droplets, and — to make matters worse — not in a consistent manner. A drone’s speed, altitude, overall size and weight and angle of flight all impact downwash. Add in a little wind, and the resulting spray pattern is very difficult to manage.
“When I first got my drone sprayer, I thought [Canada’s] regulations were a waste of time. I thought we should just have the ability to use drones, because our competitors have it and there isn’t that much of a difference from a drone to a helicopter, right?” says Van den Borre. “But then I started messing around with my drone and I realised it’s a lot more complicated.”
For one thing, even a little bit of wind can prove too much for drone-controlled spraying. According to Van den Borre, a drone’s flight will be incredibly accurate regardless of wind because they’re controlled through GPS, but the wind will dramatically impact the spray pattern.
“I sat in my kitchen each morning for almost a month waiting for weather I could spray in, and every time I looked out, it was too windy to fly,” he says. “It’s just too easy to move off target.”
Van den Borre says he now believes Canada’s thoughtful approach makes sense.
“The Americans are saying ‘if we can do this, let’s do it and deal with whatever consequences.’ It’s a much more cowboy attitude. In Canada, we’re saying, ‘let’s just understand this a bit better first because it’s not always a cookie cutter solution.’ Spray height, spray width, droplet size: we’re learning about all of these. We’re going to have drones — it’s just a matter of time — but let’s do it right.”
Van den Borre’s best guess for a timeline to when drones will be flying pesticides over Canadian ag fields is a wide, wide window.
“I say one to 10 years. When I suggested that to a person involved in the pesticide industry, he didn’t disagree with me, but he said it might be pushing towards the latter. But who knows?”
Expect newer pesticides to integrate drone application alongside the rest of their testing protocol, which likely means newer pesticides will be registered for drone application before older, tried and true products that require the investment of stand-alone drone testing.
“If a pesticide company can integrate their drone application testing into the rest of their testing for a new product, that’s cheaper and easier than taking a product that’s already registered and redoing the testing to collect drone-specific data to meet PMRA’s requirements. So, the new products will probably be registered for drone application first,” says Van den Borre.
What’s Happening Currently?
Progress is being made. A year and a half ago, PMRA approved VectoBac® 200G, VectoBac® 1200L, and VectoLex® CG, larvicides used to control black flies and mosquitoes. These are the first products to be approved for drone application in Canada. Corteva announced this past July that it had successfully received approval for drone application of Garlon XRT, a Group 4 herbicide used for controlling woody plants and vegetation in non-ag settings (i.e.: around power lines and other utilities).
Meanwhile, Transport Canada recently announced that new regulations are in the works to reduce restrictions on larger drones suitable for agriculture. Currently, drone operators require a license but, if the drone weights more than 25kg loaded, the operator also requires what’s called a Special Flight Operations Certificate (SFOC), which is a very onerous certificate to obtain. Transport Canada is changing the requirement around SFOCs from 25kg loaded to 150kg loaded.
“If the rules change around SFOCs, then we can get serious about spraying with drones,” Van den Borre says. “Farmers are farmers: they’ll always say if it was bigger, it’d be better. But efficiency is important. My 10-litre drone is a great plot drone but if I wanted to cover 20 acres, it’s very inefficient. At 50 and 60-litre [which translates to about 150kg loaded], now you can do something.”
