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Understand the sentiment. But applying it selectively seems to be desirable, no matter how euphemistic the low-toxicity part is.

The article said nothing about selective dispersal. For all we know these drones are just fancy crop dusters.

From what I can read of the press release, they are claiming a reduction of 30% in the amount of pesticide used. So, a significant incremental improvement, but certainly not something truly smart like using a camera to identify individual pests and targeting those pests with directed blasts of insecticide. Still a few years from that version of this tech.

> Bayer Crop Science. The science division

No, the agriculture division. The pharma parts of Bayer are as much science as the Crop Science part, they differ in product domain not “science”.

In case you don't know, company executives make merger decisions and nobody else knows about it until it's done. So anyone at working level in Bayer Crop Science has pretty much nothing to do with the Monsanto deal.