How can we use Satellite Technology to Improve Agriculture

and Reduce Environmental Impact?

2018 RESULTS

Initiators Partner

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FOREWORD

Farming by Satellite Prize is an initiative of the

European GNSS Agency (GSA) and the European

Environment Agency (EEA). It is sponsored by

CLAAS, a leading manufacturer of agricultural

engineering equipment and project-managed

by Helios. Entrants must be under the age of 32

and can take part as individuals or as a team.

They can submit case studies of trials, or new

ideas and innovations, particularly those relying

upon European Geostationary Navigation Overlay

Service (EGNOS), the forthcoming Galileo system

and Copernicus (the European Earth Observation

Programme).

Reviewing the entries this year, chair of judges, Dr

Andrew Speedy said:

“This was the fourth edition of the competition

and the standard of entries continues to improve.

Submissions were well-presented, tackled real

world problems and offered innovative and costed

solutions. Our finalists this year featured, for the

first time, teams from Ireland, Finland and two

pan-European teams from the TREASURE project

which is funded through the European Union’s

Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme

that supports career development and training of

researchers, and in this case, specialist training

in the strategic and emerging area of European

GNSS.”

Added GSA judge Reinhard Blasi:

“The outcome of this year´s Farming by Satellite

Prize once again showed there is no better way

for innovation than investing in and rewarding

the next generation of farmers. The amount and

quality of the entries we received indicate that we

have interesting times ahead in the area of smart

farming.”

Commenting on the environmental aspect of

entries, Hans Dufourmont of EEA added:

“At a time when we are facing critical environmental

and climate challenges, it is of increasing importance

that we continue to encourage this type of strong

innovative thinking from the next generation.

Copernicus offers all citizens a vast array of data, but

we rely on exactly this kind of new thinking shown

in the Farming by Satellite competition to challenge

and improve on how we are currently using satellite

technologies and the data it provides. It is critical,

challenging, but also promising.”

Said Marcel Foelsch, Head of Precision Farming

Services at CLAAS E-Systems:

“The past summer, with its unusually high

temperatures and low rainfall, highlighted how

challenging agriculture is. It is undisputable

that using raw materials sustainably and acting

responsibly is necessary when coping with

unpredictable conditions and aiming to reduce

negative impacts for the future. The participants of

this competition are aware of this and submitted

great ideas that tackle the challenges of today. I was

impressed by the quality and level of innovation of

the concepts that made it difficult to nominate the

best one.”

Once again, the judges looked for relevance,

feasibility, innovation and potential market when

judging the ideas put forward. Shortlists were drawn

up and discussed by the judges in virtual meetings.

The selected entries were invited Marseille on an

all-expenses paid trip, to present their ideas in

person to the judges during EU Space Week.

The finalists were (see next page):

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Team Name Country Title of submission

A-Micas EU (Horizon 2020) Potentialities in drone-based Precision Viticulture

TREASURE EU (Horizon 2020) GALILEO for automated transplanting

Teagasc Ireland Feed On DemanD - wEdge & gRazing App – FODDERApp

Space Junk Italy Copernicus satellites data fusion for management zones definition

FarmHub United Kingdom Controlled Traffic Machine Sharing (CTMS)

TUT Finland Satellite-Based Machine Learning System for Crop Loss Minimization

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Teagasc FODDERApp, a complete system

and mobile app for grass and grazing management

1st Prize €5,000

About Team Teagasc:

The Team is composed of two PhD students and a

post-doctoral research fellow at Teagasc Agriculture

and Food Development Authority of Ireland, the

national body providing integrated research,

advisory and training services to the agriculture

and food industry and rural communities.

Azucena Jiménez Castañeda: PhD student (2nd

year) at Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown

in Dublin and Maynooth University, Ireland. Her

research interests include meteorological radar,

and statistics. Currently, she is working on chain

radar signal processing to use meteorological

nowcasting techniques to detect rainfall for real

time agricultural advice.

Gabriela Mihaela Afrasinei: is a geographer from

a picturesque city on the Danube in south-east

Romania, with a PhD in Environmental Sciences

awarded in Italy. Currently she is a post-doctoral

research fellow at Teagasc Food Research Centre,

Ashtown in Dublin. Her research focuses on the

use of remote sensing and geospatial analysis

for land cover, land use and soil mapping and

classification, and land degradation assessment.

Richa Marwaha: is a PhD student (2nd year) at

Teagasc Food Research Centre, Ashtown in Dublin

and UCC, Cork. Her research interests include

remote sensing and satellite image processing.

Currently, she is working on grassland biomass

estimation using machine learning algorithms.

About the Entry:

In the meat and dairy sectors across Atlantic Europe

sustainable livestock farming requires proper

grassland management. We propose “Feed On

DemanD - wEdge & gRazing App” - FODDERApp,

a satellite-based mobile application to support

efficient farm management. This webGIS platform

automatically acquires and processes latest

available Copernicus Sentinel-1, Sentinel-2 and

meteorological data (near real-time) to estimate

above-ground biomass on a per-field basis

employing proven machine learning algorithms.

FODDERApp delivers

grass budget, manage-

ment options and

growth scenarios over

a season. This re-

duces the time

spent by farmers

manually measuring

or estimating grass

growth and provides

explicit data on grazing rotation, grass intake,

fertiliser application, grass production supply

and demand, allowing planning and managing

no-grazing-season fodder stocks. The app also

serves as two-way crowd-sourcing tool, providing

input and acquiring ground truth data through user

feedback.

Mentor: Stuart Green

Judging panel:

“This team presented an idea with a strong focus

on practical issues and use by farmers. During

their final presentation we liked being asked to put

ourselves in the shoes (or boots!) of the farmer. The

idea has high market potential, the team already

have a working prototype, and good examples of

how it could work.”

Team Teagasc, Ireland (left to right: Richa Marwaha,

Azucena Jimenez Castaneda, Gabriela Afrasinei)

Screen capture of FODDERApp

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TREASURE Galileo for automated

transplanting of crop seedlings

2nd Prize €3,000

The authors are Early Stage Researchers (ESRs)

of the TREASURE project, a prestigious Marie

Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative

Training Network (ITN), funded through the

European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and

Innovation Programme. TREASURE is a very

international team composed of PhD students

spread all around Europe.

About Team TREASURE:

Jon Bruno is a PhD candidate in ionospheric

tomography at the University of Bath and conducts

research on ionospheric tomography and data

assimilation.

Brian Weaver and Kai Guo are both PhDs in civil

engineering at the University of Nottingham, Kai

conducts research on ionospheric scintillation

sensitive tracking models and mitigation tools,

While Brian studies PPP and RTK algorithm

development.

Paola Testa is a PhD student in strategy at the

Toulouse Business School, where she conducts

research on the diffusion of innovation and

strategic marketing in the context of the space

economy.

About the Entry:

Automated transplanting is a modern farming

practice where young crops are first germinated in

greenhouses then automatically planted in the field.

This technique can provide significant benefits:

increased yields, better crop quality and resilience,

reduced costs and impact on natural resources.

Automated transplanting through GNSS-based

guidance allows precise placement of crops

during specific planting intervals to ensure optimal

environmental conditions and crop survival rates.

In order to make the benefits that such practice

offers more affordable even for small farmers, the

TREASURE team proposes an EGNSS-based

PPP-RTK positioning algorithm augmented with

ionospheric corrections to improve precision and

reduce the Time-To-First-Fix (TTFF) for a single-

receiver GNSS user. The developed method

can reduce automated transplanting downtime,

increase economic efficiency, and maximize

operational productivity. These benefits may help

the agriculture industry in sustainably bridging the

current yield gap, especially for small farmers.

Judging panel: “This was a very professional

presentation which addressed a hot topic. It

proposed innovative, fast converging of PPP

solutions. The team showed solid knowledge of

precision technologies and their idea has many

other potential applications.”

Team TREASURE, pan European (Left to right:

Brian Weaver, Paula Testa, Kai Guo and Jon Bruno)

Automated transplanting in the field

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Team Space Junk Copernicus

Satellites Data Fusion for Management Zones Definition

3rd Prize €1,000

About Team Space Junk:

The team consists of three postgraduate students

at the Digital Agriculture Lab, University of Padua,

Italy.

Marco Sozzi: His work focuses on data fusion and

remote sensing in precision viticulture.

Ahmed Kayad: His work focuses on yield

monitoring, prediction and evaluation of yield

limiting factors in field scale.

Domenico Giora: His work focuses on a case

study of field spatial variability and the detention of

management zones.

Mentor: Dr Francesco Marinello

About the Entry:

The European Earth Observation satellites are

powerful tools which can help to perform precision

agriculture. Space and time variability of crops

and soil features can be detected by several

instruments mainly represented by proximal and

remote sensing. Proximal sensors allow detection

of crop or soil features with a sub-metre resolution,

but they are often expensive. On the other hand,

remote sensing allows detection of a large quantity

of information quickly and relatively cheaply.

Several studies have shown the usefulness

of Sentinel-1 or Sentinel-2 satellites, but a

methodology that takes advantage of both sensors

is not clear. Electromagnetic sensor (EMI) data can

be integrated with soil sampling and vegetation

mapping by NDVI to draw a prescription map for

nitrogen fertilisation. Data fusion from different

satellites can take advantage of increased spectral

and temporal resolutions.

This work shows two innovative data management

approaches: (1) The use of backscattering

coefficient for soil properties in centre pivot system,

and (2) the use of the correlation coefficient to

evaluate the NDVI trend during the growing season.

This method can be easily applied all over the world

since it is based on free of charge software (SNAP-

ESA, GeoFis and QGis) and free of charge satellite

images (Sentinel-2).

Judging panel:

“This entry was about data fusion, a hot topic today.

It was a nice end-to-end concept with a good

technical background that included both a case

study and a business angle. A rounded and well-

delivered entry.”

Team Space Junk, Italy (left to right: Ahmed Galal,

Marco Sozzi, Domenico Giora)

Data fusion can increase the accuracy of the management

zones definition

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PHOTO GALLERY

Dr Andrew Speedy saying some words to the finalists

Stephan Vormbrock from CLAAS at Elyssa

On our way to start the judging

Reinhard Blasi at “Elyssa” welcoming the finalists

Finalists discussing with judges and organisers before the welcome dinner

During the award Ceremony

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“We are very happy to be the winners. We still

cannot believe it! This was an amazing experience

we really enjoyed brainstorming and developing

the idea back in Ireland. And meeting all the other

finalists and judges during the EU Space Week in

Marseille was fantastic! We hope to keep these

connections in years to come.”

– Teagasc –

Quotes from the winners

“All the teams had very good ideas and we are

very proud to be amongst the winners of this

edition. The judges are very knowledgeable with

vast expertise in agriculture and we feel that this

is a big reward for us. We would like to add that

this is a good opportunity for PhD students to step

back from their research and explore the actual

use/result of their research. In the end, it is also a

great opportunity to visit a new country and get in

contact with the culture, food, people, etc.”

– TREASURE –

“This was a very good experience. We had a nice

time with the other finalists and also got the chance

to interact with both the judges and some other

companies that were present during the EU Space

Week. All these highly skilled people can have a

significant impact on you as a PhD student and

future expert.”

– Space Junk –

Left to right: Richa Marwaha, Gabriela Afrasinei and Azucena Jimenez Castaneda

Left to right: Brian Weaver, Kai Guo, Paula Testa and Jon Bruno

Left to right: Domenico Giora, Marco Sozzi and Ahmed Galal

Prize Organisers: Helios

29 Hercules Way

Aerospace Boulevard

AeroPark, Farnborough

Hampshire, GU14 6UU, UK

Tel: +44 1252 451 651

Fax: +44 1252 451 652

Email: info@farmingbysatellite.eu

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