Predicting crop growth and yield development is crucial both on the local level for farm management measures, as well as on the regional to continental level to predict food supply and allow early warnings for food shortages due to yield loss. Earth Observation (EO) data combined with modeling are a crucial input for these services, as they allow for scalable and continuous service delivery from an independent source. However, for farmers, existing predictions come too late in the season. To effectively influence crop development with smart farming measures, predictions need to happen while the crops are still in the vegetative phase, i.e., much sooner in the season. In this use case, we will combine data from different sources (e.g., operational multispectral and SAR satellite data as well as available hyperspectral data) to provide the needed input for physical modeling and deep learning techniques that derive crop type as well as crop status and current crop growth, toward the goal of predicting crop development as early as at vegetation start in spring.
Data management tools:
Types of data:
The integration of EO data with farming technologies selected and contextualized according to local specificities can empower end-users with valuable data to support land management and crop planning. The management of water, fertilizers and pesticides must satisfy requirements that software helps to manage. This aids users in developing precision farming agricultural strategies. Prescription maps are produced for variable rate treatments or precision irrigation. Correlating best practice activities, meteorological indicators, and IoT data from crop proximal sensing and food processing equipment, can offer information on how a crop product may have been contaminated or “simply” dirtied by soil splashing. Then, the food processing equipment can use this data to manage water and other resources needed accordingly. In this use case, we will integrate and correlate data from the crop, with the post-harvest stand-alone machinery to enable the creation of a data-driven decision support system for addressing many different issues that influence the plant status in field and in post-harvest.