AFRE Professors Ben Belton and Tom Reardon publish paper in Science
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EmailThe paper is co-authored with MSU colleagues Tom Reardon and Leo Baldiga (PhD candidate, Geography).
Ben Belton is an internationally recognized food systems and development researcher with over two decades of experience shaping inclusive, resilient, and nutrition-sensitive agrifood systems across Asia and Africa. In a recent published paper, co authored with MSU colleagues Tom Reardon and Leo Baldiga (PhD candidate, Geography), they focus on the question of Can the global drone revolution make agriculture more sustainable?
Agriculture is undergoing a new revolution. Technological advances allow drones to perform multiple tasks, including spreading fertilizers, spraying crop protectants, sowing seeds and surveying fields. Use of agricultural drones is growing extremely rapidly, particularly in Asia and Latin America. The agricultural drone revolution has received little attention because it has happened so quickly, with most developments occurring in the past five years. This revolution is significant because drones have the potential to enhance agricultural sustainability and reduce health risks by applying inputs more efficiently and safely than conventional methods. Drones also have the potential to raise agricultural productivity and farm incomes, overcome labor scarcity, and support rural livelihoods. But they create tradeoffs, including new environmental and social externalities, and dilemmas around technological sovereignty and data privacy. Coordinated science and policy responses could help to harness the potential of agricultural drones more fully and minimize associated risks.
This piece was published in Science which is a journal that "has been at the center of important scientific discovery since 1880."
