Drones are becoming ever more powerful, and their prices continue to fall. Additionally, ever smaller and more powerful video equipment is becoming available, which allows for precise recordings even at higher altitudes. The agricultural industry is exploiting these advantages under the name “precision farming”. But other players are also increasingly turning to drones.
For example, drones are also being used by animal welfare and animal rights organisations. Previously, activists who wanted to document the conditions on livestock farms were held back by high fences and other security measures. But now they can film the extent of and conditions on large-scale agro-industrial facilities from the air, and describe them in more detail than ever before. The recordings can be shared via social media, and then viewed and shared millions of times online. Drone videos have shown piles of dead animals, liquid manure lakes, and huge fattening plants with their negative environmental impacts, for example. As more and more activists use drones, the number of videos is increasing day by day, and they can be spread around the globe in hours.
The videos also make it clear to consumers that the modern agricultural industry no longer has anything to do with rural idylls. Those who are already debating whether they should continue to eat meat will likely gravitate even more towards a plant-based lifestyle after viewing this footage.
Drones are already being used by the organisation Mercy for Animals. Another example is this video, which shows the huge dimensions of a factory farm in the USA; it has already been viewed more than 5.7 million times.
