Precision Ag Researcher Of The Year
Don Cummins, Natchitoches, Louisiana, President, Air Data Solutions, has been named the 2020 Precision Ag Researcher of the Year at the 23rd Annual National Conservation Systems Cotton & Rice Conference, Southern Corn & Soybean Conference, Southern Precision Ag Conference and the Delta States Irrigation Conference.
Cummins graduated from Texas Christian University, in Ranch Management in 2002 and worked in the cattle and agricultural industries for over 20 years managing ranches in Colorado and Louisiana. Cummins is also a licensed pilot with over 1,200 hours of flight time as well as a FAA licensed/certified remote pilot with more than 1.000 hours of UAV flight time using both fixed wing and multi-rotor aircraft.
In March 2015 Cummins founded Air Data Solutions, a geospatial company specializing in rapid response and highly adaptable methods to provide high-resolution imagery and geographic information systems (GIS) services for oil and gas, agriculture including crop and forestlands, university research and planning and development industries.
“Cummins has collected aerial imagery over thousands of acres of land, but not only collected, but has delivered high quality imagery to his clients in less than 24 hours and often within hours of his overflight. He not only flies the imagery, but then often goes to the field with the farmer’s agronomist or service provider and helps them interpret the imagery in the context of their field. Whenever appropriate, he links aerial image observations to soil and plant tissue samples.”
Specific to rice Cummins has helped many. He worked closely with RiceTec by flying color infrared imagery using a drone and piloted aircraft over their experimental fields to assess plant density and forecast yields. He worked with ProAg and the University of Arkansas on correlating soil nutrient status with imagery. Cummins has worked with many commercial producers on how to use aerial imagery to derive plant density/population counts and correlate these correlations with soil nutrients, tissue sample, fertilizer applied and producing variable rate fertilizer applications.
Additionally, Cummins has worked with Texas A&M and NASA on rice yield forecasting from imagery. He has worked with rice farmers to improve rice irrigation systems. Worked with aerial chemical applicators (crop dusters) to develop precision ag methods in which imagery is used to control the spray rates of crop duster sprayers thus saving farmers money and reducing chemicals in the environment.
“In the past five years, Cummins has flown about 3.5 million acres of land and some water, with most of this being farmland. Cummins not only flew the imagery but worked with farmers, agronomists and farm industry specialist to develop precision ag maps (management zones) from the imagery and developed precision ag methods for reducing input costs and allowing aerial crop dusters to use cutting edge technologies to help farmers. He has worked primarily on cotton and rice fields.” ∆