Farmstar

FARMSTAR, the crop management support service developed by Infoterra France, is already well-known for the management of wheat, barley and rape crops.

3rd Nitrogen Application for the wheat
© EADS

This year, for the first time, a Corn campaign was set up as an experiment in the west of the Gers département and the Mont-de-Marsan region, in Les Landes département.

This campaign, conducted in the framework of the INFOAGRI project (certified by the Aeronautics, Space and Embedded Systems competitiveness cluster in the Aquitaine and Midi Pyrénées regions), served three cooperatives (Maïsadour, Agralia and Vivadour) and about forty farmers.
It ran from the end of April to the end of October 2007 and covered approximately 2,000 hectares.

Despite a very wet summer in the southwest of France, Spot Image, which provided the satellite data required for the service, was able to obtain five SPOT and FORMOSAT images (namely about one image per month). Thanks to the processing and analysis of these images, and phenological and eco-physiological models, six FARMSTAR maps have been delivered to farmers, with advice drawn up by ARVALIS – the Plant Institute. This advice, regularly spaced over time, consisted of:

recommendations for the addition of nitrogen at the start of the campaign
information about the state of the crops at three key dates in their development (sowing + 6 weeks, flowering, and seed stage at 50% humidity), which is particularly important for regulating irrigation
forecasts on the date of maturity (seed at 30% humidity), allowing the logistics of harvesting to be organised.

FARMSTAR advice is delivered by parcel. For the specific case of corn, with sowing dates spread over a two-month period, Infoterra had to adapt its production means and procedures for staggered delivery parcel by parcel, allowing follow phenological developments at the parcel level. Therefore, deliveries were made every week.

The delivery of maps and advice to farmers was provided with technicians from the cooperatives as well as by ARVALIS and Infoterra through presentation meetings for the farmers held throughout the campaign with two or three meetings every month. This intense support service appeared to be vital for this experimental project aiming to present the contribution made by the solutions proposed and improve them in line with the needs of farmers.

This approach was greatly appreciated by all those involved and there has been much positive feedback about the products proposed and, in particular, the attention paid to the way in which the advice was given: very clear presentation texts for the recommendations and coherence in the range of colours used between the different parcel maps, thus enabling several parcels to be compared with each other.

The project is now preparing a full report of this campaign in order to prepare, as well as possible, a second pre-operational campaign in 2008 by fine tuning the products to meet the needs of farmers and cooperatives.

Information on Farmstar

EADS Astrium: Special on Remote Sensing

EADS Astrium information on Farmstar

Arvalis (Institut Technique des Céréales and Cetiom)

Spotimage: Information on Farmstar

Infoterra

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