Pilot 1.4 | Agro industry

Pilot 1.4 | Agro industry

Providing services able to support agriculture activities to resist and adapt to climate change and at the same time ensuring the increase of productivity in a sustainable manner.
Showcasing that Copernicus data sets combined with the necessary in-situ data (collected based on information collected from farm machines, industry experts and field sensors), weather and soil data can deliver improved information for-and deliver economic value to European agricultural industry and farmers.
The concept is built upon a smart combination of in situ, weather and EO data. Data collected in the GEOGLAM pilot of the Agricultural showcase will be adapted to address the needs of the agro industry.

/ Objectives

• Provide improved indicators for agricultural monitoring based on in situ, meteo, soil and RS data, addressing the needs of agro industry and farmers
• Support agro consultants in their advice to farmers
• Demonstrate methodologies implementable at field level

/ Partners

VITO, IIASA, I-BEC, TAU, DWD

/ Key Users

Farmers, Agri-consultants, Policy Makers, Agricultural Cooperatives (Green farm), Industry (Verduyn)

/ Key Datasets

Earth Observation datasets:

Sentinel data (S1-S2, S3), Proba-V
EO derived parameters/indices (e.g. LAI, phenology, start of season, end of season crop biomass.)

In-situ datasets when available:
crop type, yield measurements Atmospheric and soil measurements (soil temperature, humidity (multi-depth), ambient temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, solar radiation, leaf wetness, rainfall volume, wind speed and direction).

Meteo datasets/Services:
Standard and Open Meteo data and services (e.g. precipitation, forecasts

Other:
Soil data base spectral library, Citizen sourced streams of data.

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/ ID Card
Expected outcome of the pilot

The fourth pilot of the agricultural showcase is focusing on the agro-industry. While many services for the farmers and for the industry already exist, the uptake of EO data remains low for a number of reasons. In this pilot, rather than a technology push, we will work closely together with a number of users, to better understand their EO needs, and how this service can best be provided. 

The starting point for Pilot 4 is the existing WatchItGrow (WIG) platform, which provides EO-based information to the potato growers and -industry. The expected outcome is to have a better understanding of how EO-based services are best tailored towards user needs, which bottlenecks still exist that hamper the uptake, as well as gain insights in the underlying processes that determine user uptake. For the latter, there will be a close collaboration with WP2.

The WIG platform is used for the daily monitoring of the fields, but the available services are extended to meet the user's needs. While timely observations are already very useful, having also predictions on crop development included can be very useful, especially when ripeness of the crops play an important role in for example determining the optimal time for harvest. This new service will be targeted in the first year.   

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