NAAA has responded to some wildly inflated claims an AP reporter recently presented as fact when she asserted that “radio-controlled drones weighing 140 pounds are cheaper than hiring a plane and are able to more precisely apply fertilizers and pesticides.” Aerial application was one of the commercial opportunities for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) the Associated Press cited in an article questioning the pace at which the U.S. government is proceeding to integrate UAVs into the national airspace.

Although the aerial application assertions were but one example among many cited to highlight the services UAVs have to offer once the FAA gives the green light, the reporter’s claims were way off base. In a letter to the AP, NAAA Executive Director Andrew Moore stated, “AP writer Joan Lowy’s statements about the perceived advantages unmanned agricultural aerial applications have over manned aerial applications don’t square with the speed, efficiency and economic benefits America’s agricultural pilots provide to their customers, nor with the size and scope of the farms they treat by air.” Lowy cited the fact that Yamaha’s RMAX helicopter drones have been spraying crops for 20 years in Japan as supporting evidence, but Moore pointed out that this “is less instructive than it may seem because Japanese agriculture bears little correlation to agriculture in the U.S.” Farms in the U.S. are much larger, for starters. Furthermore, Moore wrote, “With the ability to apply anywhere from 300 to 800 gallons in a single load, agricultural aircraft can cover more ground far faster than any other form of application. The University of California, Davis, has been conducting field tests using an RMAX remote-controlled helicopter that can carry slightly more than four gallons of product per load, so you can imagine how many trips or how many UAVs it would take to cover the same amount of acres a single manned agricultural aircraft can do in a single trip.”