Drones are Revolutionizing Agriculture in the Global South
After fundamentally changing the nature of activities such as warfare, drones are now increasingly used in agriculture. But what kind of future is emerging: a more sustainable and inclusive, or a more environmentally damaging and unequal one?
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A new technological revolution is taking shape above the world’s farmers’ fields. Driven by rapidly falling prices and major technological advances, agricultural drones are increasingly used for field monitoring and the application of agricultural inputs, becoming as popular in some rural areas as tractors are in others. Researchers even speak of a global “drone revolution” (Belton et al., 2025).
Agricultural drones are spreading especially rapidly in the Global South, contrary to the common assumption that high-tech agriculture belongs mainly to large-scale and highly mechanized farms in Europe or North America. Uptake is most pronounced in smallholder farming systems in parts of East Asia (e.g., China and Japan), South Asia (e.g., India, Thailand, and Vietnam), as well as parts of South America. So far, there is not much uptake in Sub-Saharan Africa. By far the most pioneering country is China where drone manufacturing giants such as DJI are located and where more than 250,000 agricultural drones are estimated to be in use (Belton et al., 2026; Quan et al., 2024).
Who owns agricultural drones?
Farmers in the Global South typically do not own the drones themselves but access them through service providers. These may be independent local entrepreneurs offering drone services for a fee, agrochemical dealers offering bundled services alongside input sales, as well as cooperative or state-supported schemes. In many countries, these service markets are mushrooming thanks to cheaper drone technologies and technological advances, including longer battery lives, higher payload capacities, the development of more sophisticated attachments such as spreaders for dropping seeds and fertilizers and sprayers for applying pesticides. Better software allows easier navigation and operation, and modularity makes drones interchangeable for different missions.
So far, drones are used mainly to spray fields with pesticides such as herbicides and insecticides, although some are also used to spread fertilizers and even seeds such rice seeds and cover crops. This is in addition to more traditional uses such as mapping and monitoring fields, crops and livestock, for which drones are more commonly used in the Global North as well. While drones are therefore not employed for major farming activities such as land preparation or harvesting, they are increasingly taking over key agronomic steps in the agricultural production cycle. Drone services are strikingly cheap, with farmers paying as little as $10 for spraying one hectare of land. That’s less than hiring farm workers for the same type of work (Belton et al. (2025).
Will drones benefit smallholders and reduce health risks?
Supporters of drone technologies claim that they could make agriculture more productive and sustainable (e.g., Adel et al., 2026). They argue that drones can reduce the physical burden of farm work, benefiting in particular older farmers, women and children. In regions where rural labor is scarce because of migration or aging populations, which is the case in many parts of Asia, drones may also help small-scale and elderly farmers continue farming. This might reduce rural outmigration and farmland consolidation, potentially preserving smaller mosaic-type and biodiversity-friendly landscapes (Daum et al., 2023).
Proponents also argue that drones may help farmers to use inputs more precisely, helping them to reduce both costs and environmental damage. One of the biggest hopes associated with drones concerns human health: promoters argue that drones can lower health risks by reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals associated with the dangerous task of spraying pesticides by hand, using knapsack sprayers.
Serious concerns about drone use
But critics warn that the story may not be so simple. Critical voices stress that drones may reshape labor dynamics in households, displace rural laborers, and reinforce existing inequalities. From an environmental perspective, there are concerns that drones exaggerate rather than reduce the use of agrochemicals once humans are no longer needed in the fields. So far, drones are rarely used as part of precision agriculture but mainly to spread agrochemicals uniformly across an entire field rather than targeting plants directly. This might lead to a higher use of inputs. Drones, applying inputs from higher above the ground, may also come with new environmental risks such as spray drift.
There are also more fundamental concerns about drones and the future trajectory of agriculture - debates that are similar to those concerning other types of Agriculture 4.0. technologies that draw heavily on data sensing, advanced data analytics and automation. A key concern is that farmers become dependent on service entrepreneurs, data intermediaries, and technology firms (e.g., Carolan, 2020). Another concern is that drones may reinforce “lock-ins” into input-heavy, industrialized agriculture, reducing the focus on more agro-ecological alternatives (Orjuela-Ramirez et al., 2025). Drones - enabling “farming from above” - may also transform how farmers interact with soils, crops, fields, and surrounding landscapes, with implications for environmental stewardship (e.g., Daum, 2025).
Neglect by policymakers and researchers
Despite these potentially far-reaching implications, the drone revolution has so far been largely neglected by researchers and policymakers. Much of the existing literature on agricultural drones comes from engineering and technical sciences, focusing mainly on aspects such as flight performance, and drawing on data from controlled experiments on research stations and not in the real world. More recently, some social-science research has begun to examine adoption and diffusion dynamics. However, there is still very little empirical research on the economic, social, and environmental implications of agricultural drones. As a result, many of the claims discussed remain speculative rather than evidence-based, contributing to a polarized debate between technological utopias and dystopias.
Policymaking has also struggled to keep pace. Because the technology is spreading so rapidly, with most uptake in the past two to three years, the drone revolution is unfolding partly in an “institutional vacuum”, where regulatory frameworks and governance arrangements lag behind technological adoption (Belton et al., 2026).
A debate on responsible innovation in agriculture is needed
The neglect in research and policymaking is problematic because the future of agricultural drones - and of Agriculture 4.0 technologies more broadly - is not predetermined. Their impacts will depend not only on technological advances, but also on societal debates and political responses (Daum, 2021).
Moving beyond simplistic narratives of technological utopia versus dystopia, or technology optimism versus technology pessimism, scholars such as John Danaher have argued for a more “modest technological optimism”: the idea that technologies may contribute to a more sustainable and inclusive future if accompanied by the right institutions (Danaher, 2022). This insight is echoed in the growing literature on responsible innovation in agriculture, which emphasizes the need to anticipate economic, social and environmental consequences and to steer technological change in inclusive and sustainable directions (e.g., Klerkx, & Rose, 2020).
Indeed, the same technology can produce very different outcomes depending on how it is embedded in social and economic structures. A cooperative drone service designed to support smallholder farmers may have very different consequences than a model dominated by agrochemical dealers and large agribusiness firms seeking to ensure input sales and capture farmer data. Questions related to ownership and business models, and the development of farmers knowledge and skills, data ownership, sovereignty and market concentration therefore become fundamental.
The same applies to environmental governance. In the absence of effective regulations, drones could contribute to the intensification of pesticide use and create new environmental concerns, for example through increased chemical drift. In such a scenario, drones may accelerate already problematic forms of input-intensive agriculture rather than improve them.
A second possibility is more ambivalent. With appropriate policy measures and technological improvements - such as stricter pesticide regulation, mandatory training in integrated pest management, or advances in precision spraying technologies - drones could help reduce unnecessary input use and lower farmers’ direct exposure to hazardous chemicals. This would represent an important improvement in efficiency and occupational health. However, such developments may still reinforce a farming model fundamentally dependent on external agrochemical inputs in the long run. In other words, drones may optimize industrial agriculture without fundamentally transforming it.
A third possibility could offer a more fundamental system change. Under different regulatory, institutional, and innovation arrangements, drones could contribute to broader systemic shifts towards more sustainable agriculture. For example, drones could support agroecological farming practices through the targeted release of biological pest-control agents, the sowing of cover crops, the precision application of organic fertilizers, or the monitoring of crop stress, soil moisture, and pest outbreaks. Combined with early-warning systems and independent advisory services, such applications could help farmers manage ecological complexity rather than simply intensify chemical control.
More broadly, democratic debate and public oversight are needed to ensure that the future of agriculture in the era of drones is shaped not only by the interests of technology companies and agribusiness firms, but also by what kinds of agricultural systems societies actually want.
References:
Adel A. et al. (2026). Drones-of-the-Future in Agriculture 5.0 - Automation, integration, and optimisation. Agricultural Systems, 231, 104543
Belton B. et al. (2026). The rapid global rise of agricultural drones: Evidence, drivers, impacts and an agenda for future research. Global Food Security, 48, 100897
Belton B. et al. (2025). Can the global drone revolution make agriculture more sustainable?. Science, 389(6764), 972-976
Carolan, M. (2020). Automated agrifood futures: Robotics, labor and the distributive politics of digital agriculture. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47(1), 184-207
Danaher, J. (2022). Techno-optimism: An analysis, an evaluation and a modest defence. Philosophy & Technology, 35(2), 54.
Daum T. (2025). Digitalization and skills in agriculture. Outlook on Agriculture, 54(2), 171-181
Daum, T., Baudron, F., Birner, R., Qaim, M., & Grass, I. (2023). Addressing agricultural labour issues is key to biodiversity-smart farming. Biological Conservation, 284, 110165.
Daum T. (2021) Farm robots: ecological utopia or dystopia?. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 36(9), 774-777
Klerkx L. & Rose D. (2020) Dealing with the game-changing technologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and responsibility in food system transition pathways?. Global Food Security, 24, 100347
Orjuela-Ramirez, G., Zuluaga, J. C., Gonzalez, C., & Mockshell, J. (2025). Lock-in and power in agrifood systems: a literature review and analytical framework. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 1-22.
Quan X. et al. (2024). The determinants of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) adoption and status quo of UAV-based pattern management in Chinese agriculture: insights from expert interviews. agricultural engineering.eu, 79(3)
