DJI Agriculture — 400,000 drones, 980M acres across 100+ countries

East-Asia (origin); deployed globally across 100+ countries

Content

DJI Agriculture is the largest agricultural drone deployment globally. The fourth annual Agricultural Drone Industry Insight Report, presented at Brazil’s Agrishow 2025 (May 2025), provides concrete deployment figures.

Concrete global deployment figures (DJI 2024/2025 Annual Report):

• 400,000 DJI Agriculture drones in use globally at end of 2024 (+33% YoY; +90% vs 2020)
• 980+ million acres worldwide treated by DJI Agriculture drones (cumulative, across 100+ countries)
• 222 million tons of water saved (vendor-reported, cumulative)
• 30.87 million tons of CO2 emissions reduced (vendor-reported, cumulative)
• Recent regulatory liberalisation: Argentina reduced restrictions for drone deployment in agricultural areas; Spain simplified the approval process; Brazil standardised pilot training.

Specific case studies (DJI 2024/2025 Report):

• Brazilian coffee (DJI Agras T40 / T50): Operational costs reduced by 70% vs manual spraying; 50% vs tractor spraying. Use: pesticide, fungicide, foliar fertilizer application.
• Romanian vineyard (DJI Agras T50): Chemical use reduced from 241.64 L to 111.94 L (more than half); time reduced from 3-4 days to 2.5 hours; effective on sloped terrain and after rain.
• Rice spreading (multi-country): Best-practice documentation for drone-based rice spreading.
• Corn, coffee, canola, sunflowers, rice, bananas, vineyards: case studies documented.

Hardware specification (Agras T50, April 2024 international launch):

• Coaxial dual-rotor design, 54-inch propellers
• 40 kg spraying or 50 kg spreading payloads
• Up to 50 acres (21 hectares) per hour spraying
• 16 L/minute dual atomisation spraying system; up to 24 L/minute with four-sprinkler kit
• 9-minute fast charging (30% to 95%)
• 1,500 charge cycle battery warranty

Data privacy posture (DJI explicit statement):

• “No flight logs, photos, or videos are synced with DJI by default.”
• “DJI Agras drones are designed to store data locally in the remote control and the drone.”
• Operators must opt-in to share data on DJI servers.
• Non-China-mainland user data housed in US, Japan, Europe servers (TLS-protected).
• AES-256 encryption for personal data.
• Third-party security audits: Booz Allen Hamilton, FTI Consulting, Kivu Consulting (since 2017).

What this unit is doing in the taxonomy

Anchors the robotics — aerial × on-farm-production-open-field cell with the single largest agricultural drone deployment globally as a substantive unit. Distinguishes from:

• XAG (xag-china-drone-leader.md) — Chinese-domestic scale leader; 1.2M farmers, 27K drones, more than half of Chinese agricultural drone sales. Distinct deployment model (service-provider).
• Naïo Technologies (naio-technologies.md) — French, ground robotics (open-field and vineyards). Different deployment model (specialty robotics).
• John Deere See & Spray (john-deere-see-and-spray.md) — US row-crop, computer-vision-driven ground spraying. Different deployment model (equipment-integration).

Why it matters for talks

• The 400,000 drones / 980M acres / 100+ countries figure is concrete deployed evidence at scale. Worth knowing for any talk about the global agrifood AI landscape.
• The case study figures (Brazil coffee 70%/50% cost reduction; Romania vineyard 50%+ chemical reduction; 12x time reduction) are concrete deployment outcomes worth naming.
• The 222M tons water saved / 30.87M tons CO2 reduced are vendor-reported; worth verifying but concrete enough to anchor discussion.
• The data privacy posture (local storage by default; opt-in; non-China servers) is substantive. Distinguishes DJI from data-extractive vendor models (Bayer FieldView, Blue Yonder).

Critical context

• 400,000 / 980M acres / 100+ countries figures are vendor-reported (DJI Annual Report). Independent verification limited.
• 222M tons water saved and 30.87M tons CO2 reduced are cumulative vendor calculations; methodology not detailed in our source.
• DJI is a Chinese-origin company. Geopolitical posture matters: US restrictions on DJI drones have varied; DJI has explicitly built out non-China-mainland server infrastructure to address concerns. Worth knowing for talks.
• The case study figures are vendor-reported from named partners; worth verifying for high-stakes citation but concrete enough to anchor discussion.
• The DJI SmartFarm app and agritech ecosystem are bundled with the hardware; the value capture model is hardware-first with software complementary. Distinct from Bayer FieldView (data layer on top of inputs) or xFarm (independent platform).