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U.S: Guardian Agriculture “First Drone Manufacturer to Begin Commercial Operations”

Guardian Agri­cul­ture, a devel­op­er of drone sys­tems for com­mer­cial-scale sus­tain­able farm­ing, announced this week it has become the first such man­u­fac­tur­er to begin U.S com­mer­cial oper­a­tions, reports a press release. The com­pa­ny recent­ly began oper­at­ing four of its drones, spray­ing crops in the Sali­nas Val­ley region of Cal­i­for­nia.

Guardian drones “spray crops more effi­cient­ly, sus­tain­ably, and safe­ly than tra­di­tion­al crop-dusters or ground-based equip­ment, “ explains the release. “Its sys­tems are ful­ly pro­gram­ma­ble, repeat­able and sim­ple to oper­ate. A sin­gle drone can cov­er up to 60 acres per hour, car­ry a 200 lb pay­load, and has a com­bined tank fill and super­charge time of less than 1 minute.”

Adam Bercu, Founder and CEO of Guardian, com­ment­ed, “While sev­er­al com­pa­nies are devel­op­ing sim­i­lar tech­nolo­gies, we are now the only one that has both secured FAA approval to oper­ate com­mer­cial­ly nation­wide, and that’s actu­al­ly start­ed fly­ing mis­sions on behalf of pay­ing cus­tomers.”

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In March this year, Guardian received approval from the FAA to oper­ate its air­craft nation­wide, mak­ing it “the first com­mer­cial autho­ri­sa­tion of any kind in the U.S.” In addi­tion to receiv­ing this approval, the com­pa­ny is also a mem­ber of the FAA’s Inte­gra­tion Part­ner­ship Agree­ment, which advis­es the Agency on how to incor­po­rate such craft into the Nation­al Air­space Sys­tem.

Guardian’s plat­form, which already has more than USD100 mil­lion in cus­tomer orders, “is the only autonomous, elec­tric, aer­i­al crop pro­tec­tion sys­tem designed specif­i­cal­ly for large-scale agri­cul­ture,” con­tin­ues the release. “And unlike exist­ing unmanned autonomous sys­tems, Guardian designs and man­u­fac­tures its sys­tem entire­ly with­in the U.S., sup­port­ing the country’s com­pet­i­tive­ness, jobs and ensur­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty.”

Back­ground

Found­ed in 2017, and with offices in Mass­a­chu­setts and Cal­i­for­nia, Guardian has raised more than USD20 mil­lion in fund­ing. The com­pa­ny boasts a top lead­er­ship team cov­er­ing engi­neer­ing and auton­o­my.

Employ­ing drones for agri­cul­ture, in par­tic­u­lar for crop spray­ing, has been in use in Asia for some years now. It is wide­spread in the south-east of the region with South Korea using these craft for approx­i­mate­ly 30 per­cent of their agri­cul­ture spray­ing. These spe­cial­ist drones are able to nav­i­gate very hard to reach areas, such as steep tea fields at high ele­va­tions.

In Amer­i­ca, com­pa­nies like RYSE Tech­nolo­gies and Rotor, view agri­cul­ture as a major part of their mar­ket and over the next 10 years, com­pe­ti­tion will dra­mat­i­cal­ly increase as more busi­ness­es enter this lucra­tive glob­al com­mer­cial sec­tor val­ued at USD65 bil­lion annu­al­ly.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.guardian.ag/

(Top image: Guardian Agri­cul­ture)

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