Transcript

VASILLIS PSIROUKIS

Hello, everyone. My name is Vasillis Psiroukis. I'm an agricultural engineer. I work at the Agricultural University of Athens and within the ICAERUS project, I am leading Use Case 2, the spraying drone experiment.

FRANCESCA YDRAIOU

I am Francesca Ydraiou. I'm an agronomist specialised in crop protection. And I am the director of Hellenic Crop Protection Association.

GEORGE FRAGOPOULOS

And I am George Fragopoulos. I am occupied also in the Hellenic Crop Protection Association as an agronomist. The European Green Deal, which was launched by the European Commission in 2019 - and one of its strategies, especially the strategy from farm to fork, promotes the use of digital and precision agriculture. And this includes also the drones in agriculture. This is what ICAERUS is trying to do and take advantage of this legislation. And this is what we are trying to do to develop the drones as a spraying tool.

VASILLIS PSIROUKIS

So spraying drones can be bought from individual farmers that want to purchase an alternative spraying vehicle. But, at the same time, companies can also benefit from that. They can create their own fleet and they can provide drone spraying as a service.

FRANCESCA YDRAIOU

And these companies can be really new companies, start-up companies that they are dealing either with crop protection or with IT. And I think they can combine both and have really a new company, which might be very useful to provide this service to small farmers.

So these new companies have to try to find ways just to contact the potential customers. And there are different ways to do it, either online nowadays or in the more traditional way, which is actually contacting in person, participating in fairs, and things like that. And I think it's - it depends, again, on the country and the countries where customers - no matter if they are farmers or technicians, they are more advanced in communicated online and other countries, like, mostly in the South, where we might have people that they prefer the face-to-face contact.

Right now, the European legislation prohibits the use of drone spraying. And the reason for this is that, according to the European legislation, this is considered to be an aerial spraying. And, in general, aerial spraying is prohibited in the EU.

But when we're talking about aerial spraying, actually we're talking about spraying with helicopters, aircrafts, etc, not with drones. And I think that there is a need to clarify, as soon as possible, the framework regarding the spraying drones, and their use in the EU, and define the protocols necessary to do it.