A wild boar spends the night in a maize field. By morning there are flattened corridors, holes, torn edges. Someone will have to say how many square metres have gone, and that sentence will be worth money.
That is the assessor's job, and that is where the drone came in.
Four euros in ten do not reach the farmer
Compensation for large game damage rests on the departmental hunting federations in France. They pay, out of their own funds, for what boar, red deer or roe deer destroyed on a farmer's land.
The burden is heavy. A 2026 question to the Senate puts it at close to a hundred million euros a year, or about 85 % of the federations' budget. But the figure that interests the assessor lies elsewhere, and it comes from the ministerial reply: administrative costs account for nearly 40 % of the envelope.
Out of ten euros mobilised, four do not reach the farmer's pocket. They pay for processing the file: the travel, the measurement, the report, the dispute.
That share, and only that share, is what the drone touches.
How damage is measured today
The assessor travels out. They walk the field, often in July through two-metre maize, and reconstruct the destroyed areas with a compass and paced distances. They record a percentage loss, an area, a crop, a growth stage.
Three things make the exercise hard, and none of them is a question of competence:
- Damage does not come in one piece. A boar does not destroy a square, it digs a network. Adding up irregular fragments from ground level is estimation, not measurement.
- You cannot see what you are walking through. From inside a tall crop, sight carries a few metres. The overall shape is deduced, not observed.
- Disagreement has no material arbiter. When the farmer objects, there are only two judgements facing each other, and nothing in between.
What the drone changes, and it is already in service
This is not a prospect, it is established practice. The Isère federation attended a field demonstration in September 2024; the provider running it was equipping four departmental federations at the time, with eight more being supported. In Indre-et-Loire, a farming union equipped itself separately to produce its own surveys.
The principle is simple and there is no magic in it: the field is photographed in vertical flight, software assembles the images into an orthophoto, and the destroyed zones are outlined on that image. The area is no longer estimated, it is calculated. The farmer receives a map with the affected zones circled, and the corresponding percentage.
What that shifts, concretely:
- Dated, shareable evidence. A georeferenced image can be read again six months later, in committee or in a dispute. A handwritten report cannot.
- Time spent in the field. The flight takes a few minutes where walking took the hour, and the assessor gets out of the maize.
- The nature of the disagreement. You are no longer discussing a judgement, you are discussing an outline. That is not the same conversation.
⚠️ The cost is not trivial. The Indre-et-Loire union reports 11,790 € in the first year, including drone, mapping software subscription and training. It is an investment to amortise over several seasons, not an accessory.
What the drone does not change
This has to be said, because disappointment always comes from what was allowed to be believed.
The drone measures an area, it does not assess a loss. Compensation is calculated on an expected yield and a price, not on square metres. The photograph gives the denominator, not the result.
It does not remove the adversarial character. Assessment remains a procedure in which the farmer may disagree. A disputed map is still a disputed map.
It does not see everything. Under dense cover, older damage recolonised by vegetation can go unnoticed from vertical view, where a ground assessor would have felt it underfoot.
And it says nothing about the cause. Telling boar damage from badger damage, from lodging or from a sowing fault, remains ground knowledge.
Equipping yourself means becoming a drone operator
This is the point usually discovered after the purchase, and it is not incidental: a federation flying its own aircraft becomes an unmanned aircraft operator, with the obligations that come with it.
- Registration. From 250 g, or as soon as a camera is carried, the operator registers and displays their number legibly on the aircraft.
- Remote pilot competence. An isolated field generally falls under the Open category, subcategory A3, with the matching certificate. It is not a formality you complete after the first flight.
- Zones. A farm field is not free airspace. An aerodrome, a military area or a temporary restriction applies above a field as anywhere else.
- Traceability. Who flew, when, over which field, with which aircraft. The day a survey is contested, it is that record that answers, or that is missing.
A flight nobody can attribute or date weakens exactly the survey it was meant to consolidate.
Going further
- Check whether a field can be overflown - permanent zones, before setting out.
- Drone regulations in France - registration, categories, required competences.
- Rescuing fawns with thermal drones - the other seasonal use, in spring, and how farmers and pilots organise it.
Sources
- French Senate, written question no. 08646 (2026) and ministerial reply: annual burden close to a hundred million euros, of which nearly 40 % administrative costs.
- Departmental hunting federation of Isère, demonstration of 13 September 2024.