News
Czechs Will Host Galileo Headquarters
Published on Tuesday, 07 February 2012
The Czech government signed an agrement January 27 with the European GNSS Agency (GSA) for Prague to host the headquarters of the Galileo system. The signing took place during the Galileo Application Congress Prague 2012. Paving the way for the Agency's presence in the Czech Republic, the host agreement was jointly signed by Pavel Dobeš, minister of Transport, and Carlo des Dorides, executive director of the GSA, in the presence of Petr Nečas, prime minister of the Czech Republic and Antonio Tajani, vice president of the European Commission responsible for industry and entrepreneurship. The accord will see the GSA moved to Prague later this year.
ICT and Automation for a Greener Agriculture
Published on Thursday, 22 December 2011
The ICT-AGRI 2nd call for transnational projects aims at improving the utilization of ICT and automation for a sustainable use of natural resources, reduction of agriculture's environmental footprints, adaptation to and mitigation of climate change, while securing food supply, quality and safety, farm economy, working conditions, and animal welfare.
Landsat archives opened by ESA
Published on Wednesday, 14 December 2011
In its archives, ESA holds around two million products that cover Europe and North Africa. The total amount of data available is worth about 450 terabytes - that's equivalent to about 900 000 hours of audio recorded at CD quality. ESA has been acquiring Landsat data at European stations since the 1970s. Now the archives will be opened.
Reporting back from AGRITECHNICA
Published on Friday, 25 November 2011
From 13th to 19th of November 2011 415,000 visitors (with 24% of international visitors) came to see the AGRITECHNICA, the world's largest exhibition for agricultural machinery and equipment in Hanover. Altogether 2,698 exhibitors (50 percent of international participation) in 24 halls and one open air floor filled 221,792 m2 of net floor space; with an overal of 388,542 m2 occupied exhibition space it covered nearly the whole available fair space.
International Conference on Precision Agriculture
Published on Wednesday, 26 October 2011
3rd Call for Abstracts for the 11th International Conference on Precision Agriculture - Abstract submission deadline: November 30th, 2011.
The organisation invite you to submit your abstract for the various conference topics. Abstracts will be reviewed for suitability based on scientific content and clarity. Abstracts meeting these criteria will be accepted for presentation as either oral or poster presentations at the conference.
Gap leading to Lower Precision Farming Uptake?
Published on Thursday, 06 October 2011
Jeff Thurston wonders in his dialogue section in V1 Magazine if the gap between surveying and GIS contributes to lower Precision Farming uptake. He states many people have talked about a gap between surveying technology and geographic information system (GIS) technology over the years. Recent reports of precision farming uptake indicate lower than expected results - all at a time when commodity prices are high and food production is high on the agenda. What are the reasons for these lower uptake rates in the face of positive farm gate revenue in many places, and a future that looks even brighter for food producers, particularly those interested in maximizing production through geospatial and geomatics technologies?
Precision Farming by Self-Learning Autonomous Tractor
Published on Wednesday, 21 September 2011
A farmer working in the field for hours on his tractor... Maybe this will be history soon! Flanders' Mechatronics Technology Centre (FMTC) in collaboration with the Department of Mechatronics, Biostatistics and Sensors (MeBioS) of the Leuven University (Belgium), converted a New Holland tractor into an autonomous driving field robot. This tractor learns the soil characteristics and, with this knowledge, adjusts his speed and steering angle. In this way the tractor is able to work very accurately on a desired track, without a driver.
CLAAS & Trimble Announce Agreement
Published on Tuesday, 20 September 2011
CLAAS of America Inc. is proud to announce the newly formed agreement with Trimble, a recognized leader in GPS mapping and precision guidance technology. CLAAS says this new collaboration allows for greater grower flexibility as they say to continue to lead with innovation, providing a customer-friendly interface for Trimble steering and yield mapping systems in North America.
PrecisionAg Award of Excellence Winners Announced
Published on Monday, 05 September 2011
The PrecisionAg Institute has announced the recipients of the 2011 PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence. In it's fifth annual presentation of these awards, designed to celebrate the people and programs that have helped agriculture realize the full benefits of technology to improve agronomy, efficiency, and stewardship in crop production they announced this year's winners as follows:
- Farmer Award Dan Forgey, Farm Manager, Gettysburg, SD
- Crop Adviser/Entrepreneur Award Dave Nerpel, Director of Field Technology, Warden, WA
- Agriculture Educator/Researcher Award Scott Beck, Atlanta, IN
- Legacy Award Dr. Nyle Wollenhaupt, Plant Scientist, Minnetonka, MN
Report back from Events!
Published on Friday, 15 July 2011
Did you visit the EFITA and the WCCA conferences, which were held jointly with the ECPLF and the ECPA conferences in Prague? Or did you visit the Info Ag 2011 conference in Springfield, IL, or maybe some other CAPIGI community related event? We are curious to learn about your observations, impressions and ideas! Share them in our LinkedIn group CAPIGI or send us an email and we will post it for you.
Climate Change Confusing Farmers
Published on Wednesday, 29 June 2011
Farmers seem to be suffering from a case of information overload, when it comes to climate change. The director of the National Institute for Rural and Regional Australia at the Australian National University in Canberra, Dr Anthony Horgan, says farmers are confused about how to manage changes in the climate because of conflicting information.
Blog: Imagining Tomorrow's Agriculture
Published on Wednesday, 08 June 2011
In the latest blog of Matija Kopic a young entrepreneur from Osijek, Croatia, who is very passionate about agricultural IT we read: "Sadly, agriculture isn't stepping up to the challenge of becoming a true internet hero like others. Social networking, location services, media apps, finances, on-line sales, ERP, CRM, collaboration... Do you feel something is missing? Oh yes, we do. We are thinking about that really hard. Every day. While some industries are leading the way in exploring the endless possibilities of internet-driven new business paradigms, agriculture stays behind. It's a pretty shy industry, and by now, you must have figured that we're here to turn the tide.
How do Satellite & Airborne Images Relate to Agriculture?
Published on Thursday, 19 May 2011
Satellite and aerial imagery play a significant role in modern day agricultural production and forest related activities. Advances in image sensors help to identify and delineate landscape level food production not only in different ways, but more quickly and effectively than before - and at higher resolutions. Image processing software supports these sensors, providing greater analytical capabilities, thus improved knowledge, than was previously possible.
Europe's Exceptionally Dry Spring on ESA
Published on Friday, 13 May 2011
Western Europe's exceptionally dry spring is clear to see in maps generated using data from SMOS, showed on ESA's website. While these maps offer an interesting view of the stark difference in soil moisture compared to a year ago, the data are also important for agricultural and hydrological applications. ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission has been orbiting Earth for 18 months now, making global observations of the moisture held in the top layers of soil and salt in the surface waters of the oceans. These data are much-needed for a better understanding of the water cycle and, in particular, the exchange processes between Earth's surface and the atmosphere.
Geodata for Agriculture
Published on Friday, 13 May 2011
"In this month's issue of GEO:connexion International four articles are published focusing on different aspects of how GIS and Geomatics technology are helping farmers to become more efficient in their operations. While is done mainly for financial purposes, to increase return on investment from the technology(ies) applied, an important additional impact is that damage to the environment can be reduced. Field-and crop-specific irrigation, aided by geospatial analysis and planning, can reduce fresh water usage. Field specific crop requirements for fertilizer, herbicide and pesticide application, again aided by geomatic technologies, not only reduce costs but also reduce potential harm to the environment resulting from our need to produce food for nearly 7 billion people", editor Roger Longhorn reports in his editorial. In this issue one can also find an article coming from CAPIGI and the CAPIGI 2011 report.
Finding Benefits of Precision Farming
Published on Friday, 13 May 2011
TheUK based company Velcourt is clear about the benefits of autosteer precision guidance. Two of the company's farm managers share their findings with Louise Impey from Farmers Weekly Interactive.
Autosteer precision guidance has been in place for the last three years at Velcourt-managed Stamford Farms in Lincolnshire and manager Jason Turnbull shares: "This business has a huge geographical spread - about 45 miles - and encompasses a range of soil types across 3,400ha (8,400 acres). So the accuracy that it brings to our field operations has been very valuable." The resulting reduction in overlap has been responsible for the use of less fuel and fewer crop inputs, he says. "The benefits have been financial and environmental, as well as easing the management burden and virtually eliminating operator error. "Due to our geographical spread, too many repeaters were required from the base station, making RTK too expensive. To combat this, we have been using VRS RTK since last year, taking its signal from the phone modem."
Looking back at CAPIGI 2011
Published on Friday, 29 April 2011
CAPIGI 2011 took place in Amsterdam from 4th to 6th of April. The Community on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo-Information gathered for the 4th time, connecting people from governments, industry and research organisations, discussing the impact of geo-information in implementing agricultural policy. Sticking to its' format that was invented in 2005, CAPIGI again was able to present state-of-the-art overviews on innovation and research in geo sciences and geomatics, being illustrated with practice experiences in agricultural policy implementation and the latest developments in the EU agricultural policy domain.
Agricultural Development with Help from the Sky
Published on Friday, 22 April 2011
Since 1979, the International Fund for Agricultural Development has funded 13 rural development projects in Madagascar to eradicate rural poverty. With the country facing an exploding population and food crisis, the agency is looking skyward for support. To meet the demographic challenges and to help the growing population with food security, ESA and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) are collaborating to identify detailed geospatial information needed to support projects in Madagascar. Read the whole article on the ESA website.
Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam Opened CAPIGI 2011
Published on Friday, 15 April 2011
Deputy Mayor of Amsterdam, Ms Carolien Gehrels Welcomed the participants of CAPIGI 2011 by saying:
"Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to offer you a warm welcome to Amsterdam. I am delighted to have the honour today of speaking to you first at the fourth Community on Agricultural Policy Implementation and Geo Information congress. When you think of Amsterdam, how many of you immediately think about agriculture or green spaces? Not many, probably. And yet 12% of our territory is agricultural land, 2.3% is woodland and natural environment and almost 25% is inland waterways. This makes Amsterdam one of the greenest cities in Europe."
Interview Conference Chair
Published on Monday, 28 March 2011
In our news section we pre
sent you an interview with the Conference Chair Tamme van der Wal. Back in 2005 Tamme took the initiative together with Wageningen University and Research centre, the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture and Esri together to share and discuss the advances of geo-information applications in the implementation of agricultural policies in Europe.
