FAA approves Guardian Agriculture’s operation in the US

eVTOL devel­op­er Guardian Agri­cul­ture has received approval from the US FAA to oper­ate its air­craft nation­wide, mak­ing it the first com­mer­cial­ly autho­rised eVTOL in the US.

Com­mer­cial farm­ers are mov­ing away from ground spray­ing equip­ment in favour of unmanned autonomous sys­tems, but the major­i­ty of sys­tems avail­able today are too small to pro­vide grow­ers with full-field cov­er­age at a com­pet­i­tive price.

Guardian Agriculture’s eVTOL size deliv­ers the same com­pre­hen­sive cov­er­age as tra­di­tion­al aer­i­al crop dust­ing and ground spray­ing equip­ment, at the same or low­er costs, with dig­i­tal pre­ci­sion.

“eVTOL pow­ered crop pro­tec­tion is bet­ter for crops, bet­ter for the envi­ron­ment, and bet­ter for grow­ers’ bot­tom line,” said Guardian Agri­cul­ture founder and CEO Adam Bercu.

Wilbur-Ellis VP of Sup­pli­er Rela­tions Willie Negroni added: “For the first time, we now have a reli­able, cost-effec­tive, and sus­tain­able solu­tion in the form of the Guardian SC1. We are so con­fi­dent in the tech­nol­o­gy and the Guardian team that we are not only a cus­tomer, but also an investor.”

The Guardian SC1 pre­cise­ly and safe­ly applies crop pro­tec­tion using indus­try stan­dard noz­zles, pres­sure, droplet sizes, and appli­ca­tion vol­umes to deliv­er full-field appli­ca­tion. It can car­ry a 200-pound pay­load and a range of appli­ca­tion spray vol­umes.

With four six-foot pro­pellers and a 15-foot air­craft width, the SC1 effi­cient­ly cov­ers 40 acres per hour of full-field crop pro­tec­tion, com­bin­ing an autonomous air­craft, a ground sta­tion charg­er, and soft­ware.

With this approval, Guardian Agri­cul­ture expects to be the first eVTOL man­u­fac­tur­er with sys­tems oper­at­ing at scale across the coun­try, and the first to gen­er­ate thou­sands of hours of com­mer­cial flight time.

“The real-world expe­ri­ence we will accu­mu­late allows us to demon­strate our system’s safe­ty and reli­a­bil­i­ty, which we can lever­age across oth­er use cas­es and prod­ucts out­side of agri­cul­ture,” Guardian Agri­cul­ture COO Jeff Sparks said.

Guardian Agri­cul­ture will begin com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in sup­port of its Wilbur-Ellis cus­tomer in Cal­i­for­nia in the com­ing months as it con­tin­ues to ramp up its pro­duc­tion capac­i­ty.

Found­ed in 2017, and with offices in Mass­a­chu­setts and Cal­i­for­nia, Guardian Agri­cul­ture has assem­bled a team that pre­vi­ous­ly held exec­u­tive-lev­el posi­tions at Apple, BAE, Siko­rsky, Tes­la, and Uber.