DJI Agricultural Drone Fleet Hits 600,000 As EU Moves To Lift Aerial Spray Ban; Italy’s Implementation Decree Stalls

DJI Agriculture announced Wednesday at Agrishow 2026 in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, that its global agricultural drone fleet has crossed 600,000 units, a 50% jump from the 400,000 the company reported at last year’s Agrishow. The fifth annual Agricultural Drone Industry Insight Report landed in the same six-month window European regulators have begun to dismantle a 16-year ban on aerial spraying that effectively blocked drone-based plant protection across most of the EU.

Brussels published its Food & Feed Safety Omnibus on December 16, 2025, proposing the first structural amendment to Directive 2009/128/EC (the Sustainable Use of Pesticides Directive, or SUD) since the directive entered into force. EASA followed in September with SORA 2.5 and updates to the PDRA-S01 risk assessment that specifically address agricultural spraying.

Italy passed its own enabling law on December 18, 2025, but the implementing decree that would let farmers actually use drones for plant protection has slipped from a March 2026 target to end of May, putting most of the 2026 spraying season at risk.

DJI’s Agricultural Drone Fleet Grew 50% In Twelve Months

By the end of 2025, more than 600,000 DJI agricultural drones were operating in over 100 countries, supported by a network of 3,500 service centers and more than 7,000 certified instructors, according to the company’s report. The fleet treats over 300 crop types and is operated by an equivalent number of trained pilots.

The environmental figures scaled with the fleet. DJI’s thank you. credits drone adoption with saving approximately 410 million tons of water (the annual drinking water consumption of 740 million people) and cutting carbon emissions by 51 million tons (the annual absorption capacity of 240 million trees). Both numbers are nearly double the figures DJI reported a year ago, when the company put water savings at 222 million tons and carbon cuts at 30.87 million tons.

Brazil is the country where DJI’s heavy lifters have moved fastest into commercial use. Operators there are running fleets of Agras T25P, T70P, and T100 drones across coffee, soybeans, corn, sugarcane, and forage grass cycles. Yuan Zhang, Head of Global Sales at DJI Agriculture, said in the announcement that targeted spot-spraying of weed patches with these drones can reduce herbicide use by up to 35% compared to broadcast application. The company also references new field-drift studies from organizations like UAPASTF that have informed national regulators rewriting their drone rules.

Brussels Rewrites Aerial Spraying Through The Food & Feed Omnibus

The European Commission’s Food & Feed Safety Omnibus, COM(2025) 1021, proposes a new Article 9a in Directive 2009/128/EC that would allow Member States to exempt specific drone types from the general aerial spraying prohibition, provided the Commission first adopts delegated acts identifying which types qualify. The exemption is conditioned on drones presenting risks equal to or lower than land-based application equipment for the same use.

The structural change matters because the original directive’s Article 9 set a near-total ban on aerial spraying, with case-by-case derogations granted by national authorities. The Commission’s own evaluation flagged that derogation procedure as the single largest administrative burden in the directive. Stakeholders at the December 2024 AGRIFISH Council, including a majority of Member States, asked the Commission to move on drone-specific rules without further delay.

The Omnibus also tasks EFSA with developing harmonized guidance for risk assessment of plant protection products applied by drone. Even after the Article 9a exemption is in force, the underlying products will still need explicit drone-application authorization under Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009 before operators can use them. Member State comments on the proposal closed on January 19, 2026. The legislative procedure is expected to conclude between late 2026 and early 2027, with delegated acts on eligible drone types as the gating step before any exemption can be used.

EASA’s SORA 2.5 And PDRA-S01 Cut The Operational Paperwork

EASA’s ED Decision 2025/018/R, published in late September 2025, brought SORA 2.5 (developed by JARUS) into the acceptable means of compliance for Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947. The revision adjusts SAIL classifications, redefines population density thresholds, and reduces documentation for medium and lower-risk operations in the Specific category.

For agricultural operators, the more practical change is what EASA has done to PDRA-S01. The pre-defined risk assessment derived from STS-01 has been adapted to cover phytosanitary spraying: the 25 kg MTOM cap was removed (the 3-meter maximum dimension stayed in place), compliance with Directive 2009/128/EC was added as a condition, a 10-meter maximum altitude provision was inserted, and procedures for operating in controlled airspace were defined. Spain’s AESA was first out the door with a national variant, publishing PDRA-S01 (F) for aerial fumigation and dispersion of agricultural and forestry products.

EASA is also building a dedicated airworthiness framework for “heavy” UAS above 150 kg, the category that includes Agras-class platforms when fully loaded. Until that framework lands, the heaviest spray drones in commercial fleets sit at the boundary of what current European authorizations contemplate.

France, Hungary, And Romania Are Already Operating Under National Rules

While the EU-level revision works through co-decision, several Member States have moved on national legislation. France codified two laws in 2025: Law 2025-794 of August 11, 2025 (the Loi Duplomb), which authorizes drone application of biocontrol and low-risk plant protection products on sloped terrain, alongside Law 2025-365 of April 23, 2025, focused on drone-based crop disease treatment. ANSES delivered a formal opinion on December 9, 2025, on the implementing texts.

Hungary continues to operate under its Nébih decree, which the Quadricottero report describes as the first structured EU pathway requiring operator certification and supervision by phytosanitary experts. Romania has a bill in its Senate Agriculture Committee that would establish a “simple notification” regime conditioned on the use of authorized products and registration of drone fleets with the AACR civil aviation authority.

Italy’s Three-Year Experimental Window Is Locked Behind A Missing Decree

The Italian Parliament approved the Decreto Semplificazioni (Law 182/2025) on December 2, 2025; the law was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale on December 3 and entered into force on December 18, 2025. Article 6 inserts a new Article 13-bis into D.lgs 150/2012, the Italian transposition of Directive 2009/128/EC, opening a three-year experimental window for drone-based aerial spraying of plant protection products.

The amendment was sponsored by Senator Luca De Carlo, chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and passed 86 to 48 with seven abstentions. It sets the structural conditions: operations must comply with the National Action Plan on Sustainable Pesticide Use (PAN), follow ENAC rules for pilots and UAS operators, use specifically trained personnel and certified equipment, and proceed via a SCIA notification submitted to the regional plant protection service.

The implementing decree from the Ministry of Agriculture (MASAF) is the part that’s missing. The decree was supposed to land within 90 days of the law’s entry into force, putting it in mid-March. Reporting from AgroNotizie citing Senator De Carlo placed the new target at end of May. Until that decree publishes, the law has no operational force: drones can fly under standard ENAC and EASA rules, but they cannot legally spray plant protection products. Italian industry publication Quadricottero notes that 13 experimental drone treatments were authorized case-by-case in Italy during 2025 under the prior derogation regime, but those required individual authorizations on timelines incompatible with the operational tempo farmers actually need.

DroneXL’s Take

I covered DJI’s fourth annual report at Agrishow 2025, when the global fleet had just crossed 400,000 units. Twelve months later it’s at 600,000, the water-savings figure has nearly doubled, and the carbon-reduction figure has nearly doubled too. That growth curve is the kind of number that forces regulators to act, and Brussels’ Food & Feed Omnibus is an explicit acknowledgment of that pressure. The Commission is no longer asking whether drones should be allowed for plant protection; it is asking which drones, under which conditions.

The contrast with the U.S. is sharp. Since the FCC added all foreign-made drones to its Covered List on December 22, 2025, blocking new equipment authorizations for DJI, Autel, and XAG, American farmers have lost easy access to the same Agras hardware that European agriculture is preparing to scale up. I covered the global launch of the T100, T70P, and T25P last July, and the gap between what’s commercially available in Brazil and what an American farmer can replace if their fleet gets stolen has only widened since.

Two specific milestones are worth watching. The first is the MASAF implementing decree in Italy: if it publishes by end of May as De Carlo has indicated, the 2026 spraying season can still see operational drone use under the new Article 13-bis. If it slips again, the three-year experimental window gets compressed to two effective seasons. The second is the Commission’s delegated acts identifying which drone types qualify for the Article 9a exemption. Member State comments closed on January 19, 2026; until those delegated acts are adopted, the Omnibus reform sits in legal text rather than in practice.

One question this round of regulation does not answer: even after the Italian decree lands and the Commission’s delegated acts publish, plant protection products themselves still need explicit authorization for drone application under Regulation (EC) No 1107/2009. Today, no Italian-registered product is labeled for drone use. Operators will continue to need product-specific derogations from the Ministry of Health until manufacturers and EFSA work through the new label authorization pathway. That bottleneck is downstream of the regulatory news this week, and it’s where the next operational delay is most likely to surface.

Sources: Quadricottero News, DJI Agriculture press release, European Commission COM(2025) 1021, EASA ED Decision 2025/018/R, AgroNotizie.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.