As a child, Manit Boonkhiew watched his grandparents plow their rice farm near Bangkok with water buffaloes, and harvest by hand. His parents switched to tractors and threshers, while he now uses a zippy drone to spray pesticide on his field.
Manit, who grows rice, orchids and fruit trees on about 40 acres (16 hectares) of land in Ban Mai, is part of a community enterprise that recently acquired a drone under a Thai government program to digitize agriculture.
Drones to plant seeds, and spray pesticide and fertilizers are growing in popularity in the Southeast Asian country as it grapples with a labor shortage that worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, with restrictions on movement of workers.