Researcher to drone operator: meeting Violet again
A blog by Dave Vigoureux, a Frontier Tech Coach
Pilot: Piloting the effectiveness of drones in tackling Desert locusts in East Africa
It’s nearly 8AM, and I’m at London Paddington station, walking down the long platform towards the waiting area. It’s a Friday morning, so it's quieter than usual.
As I walk, my mind cuts to a different time and place: February 2022 in Samburu County, Kenya, where I remember watching a hefty, squat drone flying overhead. It looked a bit like a mechanical spider gliding smoothly in the clear, dry air.
These two locations couldn’t feel further apart, but today they’re going to collide as I meet a familiar face. It’s been a few years since I met Violet, and I can’t wait to hear properly about the work she’s been getting up to since the Frontier Tech pilot we tested together on that hilly plain in Samburu.
The retrofitted DJI Agras T16 drone used during the pilot.
Drones vs Locusts
Between 2020-2022, the Frontier Tech Hub supported agricultural and environmental organisation CABI, and a drone company Astral Aerial, as they tested whether drones could be used to combat desert locust swarms in East Africa in a pilot project.
One of the key people involved in this project was Violet Ochieng, a researcher based in Nairobi, Kenya. I met Violet when I was accompanying the pilot team as they were finishing testing and conducting some community engagement in Samburu County, one of the areas most affected by desert locust swarms.
During this time, Violet was identifying the best parameters for locust spraying, from evaluating the right spraying heights to using live locusts bred by CABI to see how effective spraying was. CABI and Astral Aerial used this research to create a set of standard operating procedures for drones using ultra-low-volume spraying, the standard outlined by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Violet led experiments to find the right flight parameters for drone operation, including looking at the spread of droplets from spraying.
Back in London, I’m eager to know, what Violet has been getting up to in the two years since?
Well, I was amazed to hear that she has taken training from Astral Aerial and become a fully trained drone operator! Violet is leading various projects looking at how drones can be used in biological pest control.
Biological control is the use of natural organisms to target particular pests, such as introducing a species that can prey on the pest without disrupting the local ecosystem.
Following the Frontier Tech pilot, CABI has built a position as an expert on desert locust control, and has been invited to take part in the FAO’s Locust Drone Technology Advisory Group. On a personal level, it's good to see the impact of FCDO funding through the FT Hub to this global learning. We know that in the long-term, the potential impact of this growing use case is great: about 3 million people’s livelihoods were threatened by the last big desert locust swarm.
With desert locust swarms, you can only really see the response when nations are grappling with the immediate problem, and luckily, this hasn’t happened in the past few years. Nevertheless, Violet has been invited to train teams in the Arabian peninsula in desert locust control, which could help prevent future outbreaks.
Dave and Violet meeting again in Whitehall
But there are other fish to fry (or bugs to spray)! Violet was in London to present her work to an FCDO agricultural innovation expert. In the meeting, I heard about some ideas currently being explored, like using drones to map and target prickly pear infestations, or to identify locations and deploy insects to combat the impact of mealybugs on papaya farms. During the meeting in Whitehall, I really felt that we are still only scratching the surface of what could be possible using this technology!
After a few years, I’m very happy to have had the chance to catch up with Violet, and to see how this work is really going gangbusters.
With the impacts of climate change and intensive farming continuing to grow, using frontier technologies to help us adopt more natural, sustainable approaches is going to be critical in humanity’s adaptation. Among the brightest researchers, innovators and decision-makers, I know that Violet will beat the centre of the change.
If you’d like to dig in further…
📸 Read this special feature on Drones vs Locusts
🖼 check out the pilot’s profile page
