(We originally posted this in 2020. You can read more of our original ideas in our archive. You can order a business plan of this idea here.)
Problem: Pesticide, herbicide, and insecticide drift has the potential to kill whole ecosystems. While this problem has inspired regulations and the publication of books, it still exits. With new technologies, there is an opportunity to use drones and robotics to reduce the amount of pesticide drift and empower more targeted (safer) forms of farming.
Solution: Recently, I’ve been listening to Silent Spring, one of the seminal texts on the study of environmental science, by Rachel Carson. For those interested in the history of the book you can read a bit more below (as borrowed from Wikipedia):
In the mid-1940s, Carson became concerned about the use of synthetic pesticides, many of which had been developed through the military funding of science after World War II. The United States Department of Agriculture's 1957 fire ant eradication program, which involved aerial spraying of DDT and other pesticides mixed with fuel oil and included the spraying of private land, prompted Carson to devote her research, and her next book, to pesticides and environmental poisons. Landowners in Long Island filed a suit to have the spraying stopped, and many in affected regions followed the case closely. Though the suit was lost, the Supreme Court granted petitioners the right to gain injunctions against potential environmental damage in the future, laying the basis for later environmental actions.
The impetus for Silent Spring was a letter written in January 1958 by Carson's friend, Olga Owens Huckins, to The Boston Herald, describing the death of birds around her property resulting from the aerial spraying of DDT to kill mosquitoes, a copy of which Huckins sent to Carson. Carson later wrote that this letter prompted her to study the environmental problems caused by chemical pesticides.
The whole reason that Carson wrote Silent Spring is to tackle the issue of aerial spraying. Though her book was written almost 60 years ago, many of the technologies that have caused the over-spraying of crops (i.e. crop dusting from large planes and not targeting the use of pesticides) is still in use today. In fact, papers about “pesticide drift” are still published annually and the problem hasn’t been solved.
This business would create hardware and software to enable “direct drone farming” at an affordable price. Some of the questions this business would strive to answer include: “How much pesticide should be applied directly to eliminate pests, insects, or weeds” and “What are the implications of mixing pesticides together” or “Could we use low-cost drones to create high-cost impacts and implications?” In short, the business would focus on “direct drone farming,” using drones for targeted farming. That would include the application of pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and event activities like watering farms or pulling weeds.
Based on research, “the global market for data in the indoor greenhouse vegetable industry alone is $120B.” When you incorporate all types of farming, globally this market is more than $300B. Though it’s a market people often forget about it, everyone has to eat and this leads to very large markets due to scale.
Monetization: Selling hardware with these drones or software that is compatible with any video-enabled drone.
Contributed by: Michael Bervell (Billion Dollar Startup Ideas)