Africa-Press – Eswatini. Taiwanese investors have presented on how Eswatini can use the latest technology to improve agriculture and forestry in the country.
This was during the Taiwan Investors Forum and Business Matchmaking event held at Happy Valley on Tuesday. With forestry and agriculture having been identified as some of the private sector investment opportunities, the Taiwanese presented how the use of drones can help the country a great deal in these sectors.
GEOSAT, a company founded by Dr. Max Lo in 2004 focusing on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and aerial imagery, made a presentation. The company is currently the leading UAV total solutions company in Taiwan and one of Asia’s top UAV design houses, manufacturers, and solution providers.
According to the report precise 3-D maps taken by drones can help for early soil analysis, which in turn can lead to achieving an uptake rate of 75 per cent and decrease planting costs by 85 per cent, adjust altitude as the geography vary and avoid collisions.
This technology according to the presentation could help identify which parts of a field are dry or need improvements, scan the ground and spray the correct amount of liquid, modulating distance from the ground and spraying in real time for even coverage.
It was mentioned that spraying was 30-60 times faster with drones than with traditional spraying.
It was also disclosed that compared to satellite imagery images captured using UAV are cheaper, more convenient and more accurate.
Stakeholders were informed that time and series animations can show the precise development of a crop and reveal production inefficiencies, enabling better crop management.
“The unmanned aerial camera is used in the thinning of artificial forestation in forestry. The advantage of the unmanned aerial camera has become a tool to understand the dynamics of the environment and canopy changes after the thinning of artificial forests.
Since 2013, the Forestry Experimental Institute has conducted different types of pore thinning tests in the Yunlin Gukeng area.
The size of the thinning plot area is based on the average tree height of the stand, set to square pores for thinning, and continuous aerial photography by unmanned aerial camera,” an extract from the presentation outlined.
Minister of Commerce Industry and Trade Manqoba Khumalo disclosed that the delegation from Taiwan was hosted to make an assessment of the opportunities and to interact with local businesses to establish networks for joint ventures.
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