Taylor Moreland sells drones, but not just any drones. He sells drones that keep farmers in mind.  

"Our goal really is to provide tools to farmers, provide a brand new tool to farmers where they can aerial apply granular liquid products by themselves on their own, on their own farm," Moreland said.

It was something he started testing at the beginning of the pandemic in rural Missouri.  

"I used the first year 2020 as kind of proving grounds testing," he said. "This is brand new technology, brand new equipment to us."

They're called agricultural spray drones and need very little human intervention to work. All you have to do is map out your field and select which spots you want to spray. 

"90% of the time, you don't even have to touch the remote," Moreland said. "The drone's just flying."

They can be used to spray chemicals like pesticides on crops and even seeds, coming in handy in areas that are tough to reach.

Moreland says the drones can also help reduce costs for farmers. 

"When a farmer needs something applied on his crop from the air, right now his only option is to call the helicopter airplane company and they just broadcast the whole field," he said. "Instead, if a farmer has a drone, that can just hit only the spots that need it. So they're saving chemical, which is better for the environment and better for their costs."

He also pointed out the drones can be used to plant cover crops, which can slow erosion and improve soil health, before harvesting crops.  

The technology is fairly new to the U.S., but drones like this have been used overseas for decades now are primarily in Asia. 

Arthur Erickson, the co-founder and CEO of agricultural drone maker Hylio, believes this technology is a game-changer for the agriculture industry.   

"Due to the abundance of rice paddies over there in Asia, it actually makes a lot of sense because that's wet terrain and it's much better serviced by flying drone vehicles versus terrestrial tractor vehicles," he said. "The drones are interesting because not only can they do what's traditionally done better, cheaper, faster, you know, less labor, more automated, but they're unlocking kind of a whole new way to approach farming that previously wasn't available."

As for the future of these devices, Erickson is hopeful the technology will take off.  

"The idea that you're going to start having these drones going out on their own, so they're charging themselves, they're refilling themselves and they're just kind of scanning these fields and making decisions in real-time and solving them before even you have to get involved," he said. "That's going to be the future of this technology, I think, in the next two to three years."

A recently released analysis by the market research firm Sheer Analytics and Insights estimates agricultural drones will be a $6.5 billion industry within 10 years as farmers look to deal with labor shortages and shifting trends toward vegetarianism. 

This story was originally published by Stephanie Sandoval on Newsy.com.

TRUCHAS, NM. — On the western slope of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in New Mexico, Gordon Tooley manages an apple tree orchard and nursery called Tooley's Trees.

When he bought the land in 1991, he says it was overgrazed and had eroded.

"From where I'm standing here, we have about 11 western states that are all tortured and in rough shape and is part of our big picture water cycle of why we have climactic chaos," Tooley said. "We are in a highly evaporative water cycle and a transformational one because we have a lack of plants and too much bare ground.”

It’s hard to see this time of year, but Tooley says his land has no bare ground. It’s completely covered in grasses, plants, trees and shrubs.

“I am totally committed to changing the way water behaves, getting moisture into the soil and getting roots into the soil and protecting the diversity of our genetic material that is at risk," Tooley said. "More than half of the varieties of apples that were in North America a hundred and fifty years ago are gone now. So that's about eight thousand varieties that are missing."

Tooley has traveled across the state collecting different apple varietals to build that diversity back up. Agricultural ecologist and soil scientist Jerry Glover says there’s a benefit to having a wide collection of trees, plants and shrubs.

“A variety of apples that are flowering at different times of the year, in addition to the range of plants, grasses, other flowering plants that are growing in the orchard, provides a lot more nectar resources, probably over a much longer period of the season for a greater diversity of pollinators — Bees, wasps, even flies other insects that are very important to keeping that ecosystem vibrant and thriving,” Glover said.

Glover says more plants mean greater biodiversity.

“We've seen a troubling collapse of biodiversity around the world over the past 50 years,” Glover said.

Though it may look different from state to state, Glover says farmers all over the U.S. can implement similar practices of covering bare ground and growing a diversity of crops. However, he says it can come at a cost.

“Folks not familiar with farming assume that farmers should just do this," Glover said. "Ya know, why not? Well, the 'why not' is because these more complex systems where you're growing more crops, more different types of plants over a longer period of the year requires more information, requires more management inputs from the farmer.”

Glover says it’s a big problem if farmers can’t make a profit. Nonetheless, he says there is a growing need for farmers to maintain healthy soil and support biodiversity as we move into a future where our food systems could be at risk.

“We need to make sure that the land that we're producing on is producing as much as possible with the least amount of environmental damage,” Glover said.

Tooley says he believes every person, not just farmers, can do their part to grow food and build healthy ecosystems.

“People are maybe deciding that, you know, 'I have a tiny backyard, I'm going to plant some fruit trees, I'm going to plant some shrubs, I'm going to make a pie, I'm going to pull carrots, grow squash, beans, whatever,'” Tooley said.

 

For those who didn't learn what a perennial grain crop is as a kid, it's like the grass you see on the side of a road that comes back year after year, except it's capable of growing food humans can eat. 

The agriculture industry faces an immense challenge.

It needs to feed a growing population, but the process of providing that growing population tends to take an environmental toll on our planet. So scientists are using new technology and innovation to come up with solutions.

Kernza is essentially a cousin of wheat. It tastes sweet and nutty.

And its roots store carbon in the ground to help prevent soil erosion and water runoff. Unlike annual grain crops like wheat, oats, and corn, Kernza doesn't need to be tilled or replanted every year.

But Kernza wasn't born this way. Lee DeHaan and his team at The Land Institute in Kansas selectively bred it. And if there were an award for best plant parent, DeHaan would win gold.

"I grew up on a farm in Minnesota, and I heard about the idea of perennial crops when I was still a kid and wanted to develop a perennial grain crop," DeHaan said. "Every plant gets labeled and identified, and a couple of months ago, I took a small piece of leaf, and we essentially do '23andMe' for plants."

The process helps predict how each plant will perform, how tall it'll be, how much seed it'll grow, and how large its seeds will be.

"Wherever humans have gone and done agriculture, we've seen a massive loss of soil carbon and soil quality," DeHaan said. "That carbon is now in the atmosphere, and part of the solution to climate change is to get that carbon back in the soil."

DeHaan says it'll take decades to transform the developing crop from a specialty crop to a large-scale one, but for the plant parent whose devotion has sustained over 20 years, it's a dream DeHaan plans to see through.

Lauren Magarino at Newsy first reported this story.

For decades, Black farmers say they have been at the mercy of historically discriminatory lending practices by the U.S. government and banks that do not treat them fairly.

“Farming is really hard for white males, and if it’s really hard for white males, then it’s dreadful for anyone else,” said Zephrine Hanson, an urban farmer who grows small crops she then sells to artisan shops.

Hanson and others say the practices have led to a precipitous decline in the number of Black farmers in our country.

According to the Census of Agriculture, there were roughly 1 million Black farmers in the United States in 1920, comprising around 14 percent of the total number of farmers in the United States.

In 2020, according to the same data, the number of Black farmers in the U.S. had fallen to 45,000, comprising only 1.4 percent of all farmers.

“You know, when you take a man’s farm, it’s not like he’s going down to work at McDonald’s,” said Dr. John Boyd, CEO of the National Black Farmer’s Association. “You break his spirit. You take his history, and dignity, and respect, and you crush him.”

Boyd says he founded the NBFA in the 1980s after he and four other Black farmers would experience discriminatory practices at the hands of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) when they would go into the office and ask for loans.

“At one particular time, [the director of the local USDA] spat on my shirt,” said Boyd. “He tore my application up and threw it in the trash can. I was pleading for $5,000, and this white farmer comes in, during my time when I’m supposed to be getting this loan, and he passes [the white farmer] a government check for $157,000.”

We reached out twice to the USDA for comment but have not gotten a response.

Boyd says, today, discrimination is less blatant. It can be something like pleasantly-worded letters saying loans cannot be processed and a farmer will have to try again next year. But to farmers of color, it is difficult; federal loans are often their only funding option outside of predatory lenders and suppliers who charge outrageous interest rates.

Otherwise, in a business built on credit, Black farmers are pushed out and forced to sell their farms.

“I’ll be honest, I hope the USDA changes, but I’m not waiting,” said Hanson. “That’s definitely something they’ll have to want to change.”

In 1997, more than 400 Black farmers filed a class action lawsuit against the USDA in what became known as Pigford vs. Glickman, charging the agency with discrimination against Black farmers. The government settled for more than $1.25 billion, the largest discrimination settlement ever paid by the federal government.