(PSFK) - Amidst one of the worst droughts in California history, winemakers are getting creative in the way they grow water intensive crops in order to maintain production, profit and drinking demand.

How Winemakers Can Use Drones

Instead of fearing California’s water crisis, winemaker Hahn Vineyards has decided to worth around the drought and outsmart the El Nino winter rains with the use of drones. The use of drones in agriculture is going become on the largest conversations of this year as the effects of climate change are yielding multiple challenges in the production of crops everywhere. The California winery is working with PrecisionHawk and Verizon to monitor its vineyards using data gathered by drones.

How Drones Measure Grapevine Growth

Five-pound unmanned ag-drones fly above the grapevines, collecting information about the crop’s canopy growth. Drops then transmit multispectral images to determine the crops overall density from sensors installed on the ground by Verizon. These Intel sensors measure temperature and humidity, which communicate or “talk” through a transceiver. Based on that data, soil moisture monitors can measure water volume at different soil depths.

That information helps flow meters gauge the amount of water to apply. Sensors in the field are also connected to a gateway housed in a “weather station” to measure wind speed/direction, humidity, rainfall and photosynthetic radiation from the sun’s rays. Using specialized software, farmers can then synthesize the crop data and receive recommendations on how to adjust their practices to improve the grape harvest. “All of that data goes into the platform, which runs it against our analytics engine, which looks for patterns and anomalies to make recommendations,” says Mark Bartolomeo, who leads Verizon’s IoT Connected Solutions division.

“The idea is, if you’re the farmer, it shows exactly what you should do.”

In November, Hahn volunteered a patch of its vineyard to test the monitoring concept. Verizon worked in tandem with Hahn to install its Internet of Things (IoT) AgTech sensors to increase the precision and better understand the irrigation needs of each block of grapevines.

“If you look at crop farming over thousands of years, people have tried to understand what makes the best grapes,” says Ashok Srivastava, Chief Data Scientist at Verizon. “The IoT platform we’re building allows us to understand data and information at multiple scales.” Srivastava feels that data enables farmers to continue what they do best: grow food for the massages.

Creating Crop Production Efficiency

Overall, Verizon thinks its solution will increase yield by 10 percent and decrease spraying and water by 30 percent. For farmers, that’s a considerable amount of revenue when these two factors are combined.

“We are bush to barrel. We’re getting a clearer picture of what’s going on at the vineyard,” says Andy Mitchell, Hahn’s director of viticulture.  “As we progress, we will be able to really fine tune what we’re looking for.”

Being able to conserve water and add precision to resources like energy, prevent crop disease and lower operating costs, ultimately results in increased and predictable crop yields. If other vineyards can leverage this method, then it’s one more positive step in developing scalable, more sustainable farming practices. Wine is an expensive crop to grow, but it can also be one of the most profitable; a smart production system such as this can be a game change to those who can afford it.