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Building an Overview over Agricultural Uses of Remote Sensing at a European Scale

Point of contact
Robin  Faivre
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales
18, avenue Edoaurd BELIN
31400 Toulouse
Phone: +33 5 61 28 22 54
URL: cnes.fr


Since January 2016, Montpellier SupAgro and Bordeaux sciences Agro have created the French watch of the Uses of Digital Agriculture (http://agrotic.org/observatoire/) to produce regular surveys of the uses of digital technologies for agriculture throughout France. Five surveys were conducted, including two on the use of remote sensing in January 2016 and February 2017. These were based on meetings and interviews with the main satellite image providers for agriculture, as well as interviews with distributors and users of remote sensing services.

The question arises as to whether the uses of remote sensing in France are specific and conditioned by the organization of the value chains, the stakeholders in place and the production organizations. It seems important today to put into perspective the results obtained and to know the uses of remote sensing images for agricultural purposes at a European level.

The objective of this action is thus to extend the scope of the current watch at a European level in the form of a first study on:

  • the uses of remote sensing for agriculture purposes in Europe,
  • Identification of application based on products and services from Copernicus earth observation information and their uses in agriculture,
  • Publication of the results in the form of a computer graphics that will summarize the main results, this computer graphics will be put online and sent to the main technical journals in the agricultural field, the link will be widely communicated so that the results can be shared by the Copernicus community

A bibliographic survey will be necessary to identify the main European players in remote sensing: Which countries are most concerned? How is the market structured? What are the crops and sectors that are concerned? Interviews and meetings with suppliers, distributors and users from several countries will gather their visions and information on the uses of their services for agriculture.

Outputs and Results

  • An increased understanding of the user community in the field of agriculture in Europe and the relative importance in terms of use of Copernicus data and services compared to other services
  • Active and complementary networks: for communicating and consulting European user in agriculture
  • 2 workshops will be organized:
    • The results will be presented at a workshop to 24 companies offering services for digital agriculture as well as to digital agriculture professionals.
    • The results will be presented to a workshop in the frame of the national convergence institute in digital agriculture (250 scientists),
    • The link will be share to all the academics attending the European conference on precision agriculture (more than 400 scientists)