**1. Introduction**

An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is a type of aircraft that operates without a human pilot on-board. There are different types of UAVs employed for different purposes. Originally, the technology was employed by the military for anti-aircraft target practice, intelligence gathering and surveillance of some enemy territories. The technology has however grown beyond its initial purpose and in recent years has gained prominence in different spheres of human endeavor. Advancements in technology has allowed for the increased adaptation of unmanned aerial vehicles for various purposes. Without an on-board pilot, UAVs

© 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

are controlled either remotely by a pilot at a ground station or autonomously, steered by a pre-programmed flight plan.

There is a huge potential for the application of UAVs in Agriculture. One such application is in accurate and evidence-based forecasting of farm produce using spatial data collected by the UAV. UAVs also allow farmers to observe their fields from the sky. This sky-view can reveal many issues on the farm, common among which is irrigation related problems, soil variations, fungal and pest infestations. Further information relating to water access, changing climate, wind, soil quality, the presence of weeds and insects, variable growing seasons, and more can all be monitored with UAVs. From a livestock perspective, UAVs are being used to perform head counts, monitoring animals and also studying eating habits and health related patterns. Utilizing the information gathered, farmers can provide fast and efficient solutions to detected problems and issues, make better management decisions, improve farm productivity, and ultimately generate higher profit. In this chapter, various applications of UAVs in Agriculture are discussed both in commercial livestock farming and crop farming. This chapter also presents some of the open challenges to the application of UAVs in Agriculture.

Immediately following this introduction is a discussion of the various types of UAVs which is done in Section 2. This is followed by the applications of UAVs in crop farming and in livestock in sections 3 and 4 respectively. Advantages of UAVs and corresponding challenges are discussed in Section 5, the chapter ends with the 6th and concluding section.
