We have taken again advantage of the visit of Fenny van Egmond from the company Medusa Explorations (Holland) to the project meeting of the LIFE Project “Crops for Better Soil” in Ejea de los Caballeros, to meet at INTIA headquarters in Villava (Navarre) and discuss the activities being performed at both projects looking for ways of collaboration. At the meeting we found out that it was a reunion between former class mates as well, since both Roberto Pérez Parmo and Fenny van Egmond have studied GIS and Remote Sensing at Wageningen University (Holland) at the same time. Ana Pilar Armesto, Juan Antonio Lezaun and Alberto Lafarga from INTIA attended the meeting and Ana Pilar made a clear overview of the objectives of the project and the structure of the AGROASESOR PLATFORM. Roberto Pérez Parmo and Gerardo Besga from NEIKER explained briefly the indicators of sustainability that are going to be incorporated in the platform with the goal of helping the farmers to assess the environmental, economical and social impacts of the farming activities.
Following this, Ana Pilar provided us with a concise explanation of the technical actions of the sigAGROasesor project, placing particular emphasis on the farmer fields and experimental plots for validation and calibration of the Decision Support Tools that are being developed at the project.
Fenny van Egmond explained the outlines of the “Crops for Better Soil” project and what has been done till this moment, giving details of the sensing and sampling methodology to assess soil properties. In this aspect, she detailed gamma-ray spectrometry, ground penetrating radar and RhoC methodologies being used to collect data on soil texture, soil depth and soil compaction, data that are very useful to assess the benefits of the farming practices being implemented at the project. Measuring these properties continuously by using vehicle mounted equipment allows obtaining field maps, which can be related, for example, to satellite images or yield maps, which are going to be developed at sigAGROasesor project.
We continue benefitting from this exchange of information and technologies, whose results eventually will be transferred to the farmers participating in both projects.
