The new scarecrowpreventing wildlife damage in your fields

The problem. Oilseed and protein crops get hit at their two weakest moments. At sowing, crows, rooks and wood pigeons pull up seed and young seedlings, and the field has to be re-sown. Before harvest, the same birds come back for the maturing heads and pods, right when the crop is worth the most and there's no time left to recover. The deeper issue is that ordinary deterrents fade. The birds work out that the noise and the shape are harmless, and they come back.

How we deploy. This runs as a two-year R&D programme (2026–2028) with Sofiprotéol and Terres Inovia, over two full campaigns: two sowings, two harvests. The setup is simple. We fly autonomous drones over the plots, continuously. Each one carries RGB, zoom and thermal cameras, and the onboard AI reads what they see: which species are on the field and what they're doing, a group of corvids dropping onto a fresh sowing, pigeons working a crop that's ripening. When it spots a real threat, the drone goes in and pushes the birds off with sound and light before they settle to feed. Then it flies back to its station and recharges itself. Nobody has to be in the field. One station covers roughly 10 to 15 hectares, and the whole thing follows a set protocol we can measure and repeat. How the detection works stays ours. How we run it in the field, we're happy to explain.

What we expect. Over two seasons, in real conditions, we want to show that this holds up where the old methods give out: fewer re-sowings, steadier yields at the stages that matter, and no extra work for the grower.

R&D programme with Sofiprotéol and Terres Inovia, 2026–2028.

The problem, measured. When the Chambres d'agriculture de Bretagne surveyed 109 vegetable and field-crop farms around Morlaix and Saint-Pol-de-Léon in 2023, exactly one said it had no trouble with large pests. The other 99% did, most of them fighting two to four species at once. The worst offenders are the ones Belver goes after: jackdaws on 79% of farms, wood pigeons on 61%, hares on 68%. Of the 25 farms that could put a figure on it, losses ran from €500 to €40,000, with a median of €10,000. But the number that matters most isn't the damage, it's the reason. Asked about gas cannons, distress calls, kites and scarecrows, the farmers agreed almost to a person: the animals get used to them. The problem isn't a lack of deterrents. It's habituation.

How we deploy against it. Belver's answer is to never repeat itself, and to look before it acts. We fly autonomous drones over the fields, continuously. The RGB, zoom and thermal cameras feed an AI that recognises the species doing the damage, the same jackdaws and wood pigeons this area knows well, and reads what's happening in real time. Once a threat is confirmed, the drone drives the animals off with sound and light, and it changes where, when and how it does that every time. Then it recharges itself. Stations cover around 10 to 15 hectares each and run through the season under supervision. Because the deterrence never repeats, the birds can't settle into a routine, so the habituation that beats a gas cannon never gets started. The one failure every farmer in that survey described is the exact thing the system is designed to stop.

The ambition. Protection that actually lasts, season after season, across a whole area like this one, without adding anything to the grower's day.

Source: Chambres d'agriculture de Bretagne, 2023.