Exploitable results Detailed assessment of precision agriculture (farmers) and agri-business expectations in terms of remote sensing information for France The farming community in France believes in the economic value of the proposed remote sensing "technology", but their interest is more in the long term (>5 years), due to the perception of not yet mature applications and technology. A majority of French farmers believes that RS information products are not compulsorily dedicated to precision farming, but that information on an average or a critical value in the field or part of a field could be sufficient. Regarding the products, the farmers believe: - Information products are valuable, not for constantly but for time variably poor areas - A highly valuable application is drainage management and monitoring - Benefit return of the variable seed rate is considered very uncertain For products map interpretation, support is requested either from a technical institute or co-operative. An acceptable price for the information products is between 8 to 15 Euro/ha. Concept for the generation of 10m resolution information products from combined 10m/20m resolutions superspectral data The proposed solution is to have only 2 bands among 10 with the 10m resolution and to apply smart image processing, resolution enhancement, techniques to generate 10m products. The technique selected is based on a linear expression obtained by regression technique between the image at 10m and 20m resolutions in the different spectral bands. The work has shown that the 10m resolution is achieved with good accuracy for the Leaf Area Index biophysical product, but not for the chlorophyll content product. Detailed assessment of precision agriculture (farmers) and agri-business expectations in terms of remote sensing information for the UK Summary: The farming community in the UK appears very interested in the use of remote sensing as a farm management tool. The focus groups held throughout the UK addressed both large arable farmers and smaller mixed farmers. The majority of farmers saw remote sensing as providing: - Whole farm assessments of crop health at specified times - allowing targeted field walking - A warning system for pest and disease attack - allowing timely applications of pesticides (and possibly a reduction in overall pesticide use) An effective mechanism for identifying areas within a field that have high/low plant nitrogen content - A mechanism for verification of yield maps - and possibly for management decisions The majority of farmers stated they would purchase the products now if the service were available, for a limited number of fields, expanding once the products were validated at the individual farm level. An acceptable price for the information products for farmers is an average 15 Euro/ha. The agri-business companies were interested in the products mainly for marketing purposes. Some stated that the products would allow them to maintain their 'high-tech' image with farmers. The monitoring of chemical and variety failures was also of interest to them. Detailed assessment of precision agriculture (farmers) and agri-business expectations in terms of remote sensing information for Spain Summary: Assessment of the potential use of remote sensing information by farmers in Spain has resulted in several conclusions: -. There are great differences in cereal growing patterns between Spain and other European countries, especially in terms of productivity and management. These differences determine a low need for RS information for cereal growers in Spain, except for big, irrigated farms. - . Although cereals are the most important crop in terms of surface area, other crops such as vegetables and fruit trees become the most important in terms of agrarian final output. -. Further development of RS products in Spain should aim at these more profitable crops, since there would be enough interest, both technical and economic, for the development and use of RS for these crops. -. One of the most important sectors in agri-business in Spain is the insurance companies, whose main interest concerning RS products would be in products which could aid in yield predictions and damage assessments. Concept for the agricultural information products distribution within Europe and business case for a remote sensing information service Summary: The recommended distribution scheme is to use existing structures which are either co-operatives in France and Germany or agronomists and retailers in the UK as a relay where the final information product should be generated and that should deliver a final and complete consultancy service to farmers. An overall technical and organizational structure of the ground segment has been established which includes a central processing facility for remote sensing raw data pre-processing, national facilities for biophysical products generation, and local decision support tools for final agronomic products generation. A business plan (sales and system costs) has been established. It demonstrates that a purely commercial initiative does not meet the conditions of a private investment. Institutional funding typically corresponding to the development of the first generation of satellites would provide the conditions for private investments in the system. The sustainability of the systems should then be ensured, considering the expected sales and costs for the realization of second generation satellites. Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
