Regional agricultural cluster meetings & training
Organize information meetings and application trainings for farmers, agriculture industry (associations) as part of an Agricultural Thematic Cluster for Belgium.
Based on the WatchItGrow (WIG; watchitgrow.be/en) service that uses Sentinel data for crop field monitoring (and yield estimation), initial focus will be on the continued collaboration with the potato industry in Belgium and to address for instance training of farmers and staff from potato processing companies and industry association Belgapom. If successful, other crop varieties can be addressed with a similar tool and training in a second step.
WatchItGrow is currently free as demonstration service, but may become commercial for specific crop processing industry customers (while likely remaining free for farmers). Therefore, it will only serve as a first concrete example application.
The Cluster meetings/workshops are intended to come to a more formally established network (collaboration agreements) targeting uptake in the wider agriculture sector, going well beyond the scope of the WatchItGrow service.
External stakeholders:
Belgapom, sector federation for Belgian potato industry (on-going collaboration).
Similar industry (or farmer) associations will be selected based on interest, economic relevance or to cover other agricultural sectors (e.g. seed breeding companies or other crops than potatoes).
Outputs and Results
The watchitgrow tool is a good example of how Sentinel data can be presented to a broad audience of non-specialists. Training sessions at industry events result in a clear view of user requirements.
At least 3 events, including one invited speaker.