What was the challenge/problem addressed?
Remote sensing has become a useful tool in precision agriculture. However, most of these solutions are aimed to intensive farming and/or high-revenue crops, which make it unpractical and too expensive in rainfed cereal fields in the Mediterranean region.
How did you solve the problem?
Freely available Sentinel satellites greatly reduces operation costs for a continuous monitoring of crops status. UAV data is only used for detailed mapping once detected any anomaly.
What is innovative in your practical case?
Instead of providing Vegetation Indices, only understood by RS experts, we deliver physically-based products, in terms of leaf biomass, nitrogen and yield, that can be used by any technician or farmer
What are the success factors in solving the problem?
Minimal operation costs and a scalable application allowed easy and cheap access to this information to farmer unions and cooperatives
Lessons learned
It is feasible to provide in near-real time information on crop properties at regional and national level, including forecasting of yield and N extractions
Most farmers are open to these tools but current services are far from their requirements in terms of services provided and overly high costs
What role does the advisor or advisory service play with the practical case?
We worked hand by hand with farmers, which allowed us to understand their true needs and existing gaps in precision agriculture practices. They also provided yield data for validating our products
Can your approach be transferred and/or adapted for other innovation challenges and regions?
Yes
Estimated transferability on a scale from 1 to 5
(where 1 is easy and 5 very difficult)
1
For sharing the experience on the good practice, please contact
Hector Nieto
hector.nieto@complutig.com +34655464901
Link to external information
Twitter: @agrotig