Day 50: Tanjaur – We Hit a New Milestone

Half a century on the road, giving drone demonstrations and trying to bring a change is a major milestone to achieve. We might have covered over 100 demonstrations as well by now since we have had a lot of double headers and triple headers too in our journey. What started off as a 10,000 kms journey from Maharashtra, we have already surpassed the target and covered close to 15,000 kms by now.

But, the journey is not over yet, and here we are in Tanjaur for Day 2 in Tamil Nadu. Our destination today is a paddy field in Tanjaur where we were received by some big farmers in the region. These large holder farmers were particularly interested in getting to know how the drone performed and how they could procure the drones. Having a large piece of land, it is difficult for them to manage the amount of labor needed for a short span to cover the entire field in a single go.

After a successful demonstration, the number of questions also increased about if multiple drones can be deployed at a time to finish the task even sooner. Since everything takes time, they understood how a drone can cover one acre in seven minutes, but there is time taken to refill the tank, replace the battery and so on from time to time, yet the process is much quicker in comparison to manual spraying, as well as more accurate and effective.

The farmers were also interested in knowing what subsidies the government is providing, but once we explained Syngenta’s offering, they happened to find more value in this since procuring multiple drones and pilots and their overheads is much more of a hassle than asking for a service provider to deploy multiple drones in a large field and finish the task sooner.

We now move to Sattur for our day 3 in Tamil Nadu, stay tuned!