Economic Potential of Unmanned Aircraft in Agricultural and Rural Electric Cooperatives

Justin Turner, Phil Kenkel, Rodney Holcomb and Brian Arnall

No 230047, 2016 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2016, San Antonio, Texas from Southern Agricultural Economics Association

Abstract: The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) predicts that 80% of the U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) market will be in agricultural and rural areas where cooperatives have a strong presence. Agricultural cooperatives could use UAVs in crop scouting to provide timely high-resolution imagery of crop conditions. Rural electric cooperatives (RECs) could use UAVs to detect line-loss, perform line inspections, and assess storm damage. Our research investigated the level of interest and awareness of these rural cooperatives towards UAVS and analyzed the feasibility of UAV adoption. Surveys were sent to Oklahoma grain and farm supply cooperatives and RECs. The survey investigated the knowledge of and interest in UAVs, and elicited information on crop scouting fees and costs, distribution line inspection costs and preventable line loss. The results indicated a low level of knowledge but a high level of interest in UAV technology. Modeling suggests that UAV applications could be feasible for both REC and agricultural cooperatives. Final regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration, particularly restrictions on line-of-sight operation and altitude appear to be a major impediment to UAV adoption. Our survey results suggest that REC applications would be particularly sensitive to the regulatory structure.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Crop Production/Industries; Production Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 18
Date: 2016
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-tre
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/230047/files/E ... holcomb%20arnail.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:saea16:230047

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.230047

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2016 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2016, San Antonio, Texas from Southern Agricultural Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().