Drones that do the work of 500 farmers are transforming palm oil

Plantation workers operating an SZ DJI Technology Co Mavic Pro 2 drone (centre) and a Phantom 4 drone at the Genting Tanah Merah Estate in Johor, Malaysia. Genting owns about 20 drones, and uses the services of other providers to monitor and map about 160,000 hectares of oil palms in Indonesia and Malaysia. — Photos: Bloomberg

As haze blanketed large tracts of South-East Asia last month, office workers with Genting Plantations Bhd in Jakarta were investigating the source of the choking smoke more than a thousand kilometers away.

Images collected from drones flying up to 400 meters (about 1,300 feet) above Genting’s oil palms help the company spot fires in remote and inaccessible areas. It’s part of a technology drive catapulting palm oil, the world’s most-consumed vegetable oil, from dependence on manual labor to becoming one of the fastest-growing markets for commercial unmanned aircraft.