A drone expert wants to dispel myths about the technology and believes many farmers aren't aware of the many advantages of utilising it in their production.
Fiona Lake is the creator of the Rural Drone Academy and spoke at the Riverine Plains Innovation Expo about misconceptions about the technology.
She said one of the biggest myths was drones only suited young people.
"When I grew up there was no colour TV, there was no microwaves, no Internet, nobody had a computer," she said.
"The list is endless of the stuff I've had to master." she said.
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However, she also believes that the most resistant to technological change can be young.
"Some of the people who are the least resistant can be in their 80s," she said.
"My observation is that resistance is driven by personality and has nothing to do with age.
"Don't underestimate what you've achieved, and think back on all the things you've mastered before so that you can do new stuff."
Ms Lake describes herself as a "bowerbird for ideas," and prepares herself for "a job that didn't exist,"
During her presentation, Ms Lake made the point that farmers who want to buy drones should do their research and purchase what they find is good for them rather than what drone salespeople want to sell.
"Most salespeople won't know about about heat dust, connectivity or anything else that will be useful for you," she said.
"You can spend more and get more, but do you really need more?
"Figure out what you want to do with drones before purchasing."
Experimentation with drone technologies to determine cold areas and frost on croplands is underway in some areas of Victoria and South Australia.
Ms Lake also said drones could also determine the wetness of soil so that tractors could avoid areas that may have them bogged.
But farmers need to be aware of basic rules, and keeping safe with a drone can mean more effective work on the farm.
"There's a lot of interest now in moving stock with drones too, but one of the main things is not to teach your stock bad habits with this tech," she said.
"You've got to know how to do aerial mustering properly... use it like an extra dog."
Ms Lake, who is based in North Queensland, is also an award-winning photographer, and has specialised in rural and outback photography and utilises drone for much of her work.
The conference also heard from Jon Medway, Senior Research Fellow Spatial Agriculture at the Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation at Charles Sturt University, who spoke about extracting real value from technology in agriculture
He said there was a "new world" in what could be done with remote sensing, either with a drone, a satellite or a plane.
"One of the things that drones have done with remote sensing is, to some extent, added a whole lot of new flexibility," he said.
"It's easy to demonstrate that a drone-based image has a much higher resolution - you can get down to centimetre resolution or be a sub centimetre resolution if you want, and that's spectacular if that's the scale of the problem that you're looking for.
"If you're in a vineyard and looking for an individual vine that's affected with phylloxera, then you need to have a high-resolution image to detect that.
"Drones are going to be spectacular for doing that."
