DJI's agricultural drones spray pesticides with centimeter-level precision using BeiDou satellite positioning, covering a field in minutes that would take a human hours. XAG, the second-largest player, has deployed autonomous crop-spraying in 42 countries.
The market dominance is structural, not just commercial. Chinese manufacturers control the entire component stack — motors, cameras, gimbal systems, flight controllers, and batteries. When the US banned DJI from government use, agencies struggled to find alternatives at comparable price-performance.
The risk for the rest of the world: agricultural drones are becoming the interface layer for precision farming data. Whoever makes the drone collects the field data — crop health, soil moisture, yield estimates. That's a strategic asset.