Dropcopter building business to deliver pollen by drone

SYRACUSE — As a business, distributing pollen is nothing to sneeze at. 

Each year, farmers pay hundreds of millions of dollars to beekeepers to have their crops fertilized by honey bees. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers spent nearly $700 million for the services in 2012.

Adam Fine, co-founder and chief technology officer at Dropcopter, is working to give farmers, and bees, some high-tech backup.

Headquartered at the Genius Center in the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, Dropcopter is building unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) that can deliver pollen to apple, almond, and cherry trees — for starters.

The idea was promising enough that Dropcopter was a finalist team in round two of the year-long GENIUS NY program. The firm was awarded $250,000 in financing from the Empire State Development-funded program that is focused on UAS. In return, Dropcopter gives up 4 percent interest in the company.

The quarter-million dollars has allowed the business to push forward with development, testing and even manufacturing, Fine tells CNYBJ.

The award also brought Fine, a San Franciscan, to Syracuse. At his space in the Tech Garden, he carefully explains that Dropcopter is not interested in making unmanned aircraft systems, or drones. “We don’t want to be an aircraft company,” he says. 

Instead the company is focused on the hardware and software that will allow a drone to precisely deliver pollen to plants so that crop yields can be improved.

The business has two functional pollinators at this point and has used them to test the process. The first tests were with almonds in California the home of Dropcopter’s other co-founder and CEO, Matt Koball. “I live in the heart of almond country,” Koball says.

The pollinators have also been tried at cherry farms in California and on June 6, Fine went to Beak & Skiff Apple Orchard in LaFayette to showcase the company’s work. A drone flew over about 5 acres of trees, dropping precisely measured units of pollen.

The results will be closely monitored at Beak & Skiff, and compared to trees that were pollinated by bees and other natural means alone, Fine says.

At other test sites, some trees were covered during pollination season — roughly two weeks in spring — so that the only pollen they would have received would be from the Dropcopter. Other trees were left to be pollinated naturally and, as at Beak & Skiff, some were pollinated naturally and by Dropcopter.

A professional third-party testing company will compare the results. Preliminarily, Fine says that almond trees pollinated by Dropcopter in 2015 and 2016 saw a 10 percent improvement in the number of flowers that create nuts — what is called a “nut set,” by those in the field. That study, he points out, was conducted by the company itself, not an outside tester.

Pollination isn’t the only possible application for drones in agriculture, according to Fine. Increasing human population is expected to put more pressure on food production, he says. That can push innovation.

“I think we’re at the tip of the spear,” he says. He adds that drones might be effective in dropping pesticides, flying close to trees to avoid treating anything other than the targeted crops.

The pollen-distributing parts of the drones Dropcopter is currently using are custom models with some parts sourced from vacuum cleaners, power drills, and even salsa bottles, Fine says. The company has used a share of its GENIUS NY grant to build ready-for-market machines. They are being built by Chenango Valley Technology of Sherburne, Fine says. He notes that the cost of having the work done in Central New York is half or maybe a third of what it would have cost back in San Francisco.

Those savings are just one benefit Fine cites of bringing the operation to Central New York. For one thing, he says, there are plenty of “very qualified” drone pilots here, able to test the machines.

In addition, the Tech Garden’s ecosystem is a great help, he says. Tax experts, programmers, and legal advisers are readily available.

In fact, he says he has found right at the Tech Garden a company that can write the programming he thinks could help automate much of the pollination process. Instead of having to guide the drone row by row, a farmer could simply input what trees need to be pollinated, or treated, and the software would direct the drone where to fly and when to start and stop distributing the payload.

That’s not legal right now, he explains. Under current laws, drones have to be under someone’s control at all times and in most places have to be within the operator’s eyesight. But he can see a day when those rules are updated and Dropcopter can present customers with “a drone-in-a-box solution” that will help farmers improve productivity.

Farmers are not fast to change, he says, so before that happens he expects Dropcopter to have clear proof that it can deliver. “They want to see results,” Fine says of farmers.

Even then, he adds, he doesn’t expect the whir of drones to replace the buzz of honey bees around the world’s crop lands. Not all crops are suitable for the process, and even for those that are, Fine says bees don’t need to worry about losing their jobs. “We’re selling this as support,” he says, “a supplement for if there’s an emergency or other need.”         

SYRACUSE — As a business, distributing pollen is nothing to sneeze at. 

Each year, farmers pay hundreds of millions of dollars to beekeepers to have their crops fertilized by honey bees. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers spent nearly $700 million for the services in 2012.

Adam Fine, co-founder and chief technology officer at Dropcopter, is working to give farmers, and bees, some high-tech backup.

Headquartered at the Genius Center in the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse, Dropcopter is building unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) that can deliver pollen to apple, almond, and cherry trees — for starters.

The idea was promising enough that Dropcopter was a finalist team in round two of the year-long GENIUS NY program. The firm was awarded $250,000 in financing from the Empire State Development-funded program that is focused on UAS. In return, Dropcopter gives up 4 percent interest in the company.

The quarter-million dollars has allowed the business to push forward with development, testing and even manufacturing, Fine tells CNYBJ.

The award also brought Fine, a San Franciscan, to Syracuse. At his space in the Tech Garden, he carefully explains that Dropcopter is not interested in making unmanned aircraft systems, or drones. “We don’t want to be an aircraft company,” he says. 

Instead the company is focused on the hardware and software that will allow a drone to precisely deliver pollen to plants so that crop yields can be improved.

The business has two functional pollinators at this point and has used them to test the process. The first tests were with almonds in California the home of Dropcopter’s other co-founder and CEO, Matt Koball. “I live in the heart of almond country,” Koball says.

The pollinators have also been tried at cherry farms in California and on June 6, Fine went to Beak & Skiff Apple Orchard in LaFayette to showcase the company’s work. A drone flew over about 5 acres of trees, dropping precisely measured units of pollen.

The results will be closely monitored at Beak & Skiff, and compared to trees that were pollinated by bees and other natural means alone, Fine says.

At other test sites, some trees were covered during pollination season — roughly two weeks in spring — so that the only pollen they would have received would be from the Dropcopter. Other trees were left to be pollinated naturally and, as at Beak & Skiff, some were pollinated naturally and by Dropcopter.

A professional third-party testing company will compare the results. Preliminarily, Fine says that almond trees pollinated by Dropcopter in 2015 and 2016 saw a 10 percent improvement in the number of flowers that create nuts — what is called a “nut set,” by those in the field. That study, he points out, was conducted by the company itself, not an outside tester.

Pollination isn’t the only possible application for drones in agriculture, according to Fine. Increasing human population is expected to put more pressure on food production, he says. That can push innovation.

“I think we’re at the tip of the spear,” he says. He adds that drones might be effective in dropping pesticides, flying close to trees to avoid treating anything other than the targeted crops.

The pollen-distributing parts of the drones Dropcopter is currently using are custom models with some parts sourced from vacuum cleaners, power drills, and even salsa bottles, Fine says. The company has used a share of its GENIUS NY grant to build ready-for-market machines. They are being built by Chenango Valley Technology of Sherburne, Fine says. He notes that the cost of having the work done in Central New York is half or maybe a third of what it would have cost back in San Francisco.

Those savings are just one benefit Fine cites of bringing the operation to Central New York. For one thing, he says, there are plenty of “very qualified” drone pilots here, able to test the machines.

In addition, the Tech Garden’s ecosystem is a great help, he says. Tax experts, programmers, and legal advisers are readily available.

In fact, he says he has found right at the Tech Garden a company that can write the programming he thinks could help automate much of the pollination process. Instead of having to guide the drone row by row, a farmer could simply input what trees need to be pollinated, or treated, and the software would direct the drone where to fly and when to start and stop distributing the payload.

That’s not legal right now, he explains. Under current laws, drones have to be under someone’s control at all times and in most places have to be within the operator’s eyesight. But he can see a day when those rules are updated and Dropcopter can present customers with “a drone-in-a-box solution” that will help farmers improve productivity.

Farmers are not fast to change, he says, so before that happens he expects Dropcopter to have clear proof that it can deliver. “They want to see results,” Fine says of farmers.

Even then, he adds, he doesn’t expect the whir of drones to replace the buzz of honey bees around the world’s crop lands. Not all crops are suitable for the process, and even for those that are, Fine says bees don’t need to worry about losing their jobs. “We’re selling this as support,” he says, “a supplement for if there’s an emergency or other need.”