Every year, the EU spends about €60 billion on agricultural subsidies. This is part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This new agricultural policy places new demands on farmers, and changes the way these demands are monitored by paying organisations: previously, samples were checked on the spot, now the entire field is monitored using satellite images from ESA's Copernicus mission.
NEO and our partner DHI-GRAS (https://www.dhi-gras.com) support the Danish Agricultural Agency (https://eng.lbst.dk) to become the first member state to introduce this monitoring. After a year of developing tools to derive agricultural parameters and observe changes to crops using optical and radar satellite images, we are now ready to monitor Denmark's 600,000 agricultural plots and give the Danish Agriculture Agency real-time insight into activities on agricultural plots: ploughing, harvesting, mowing, et cetera - but also insight into crop health.
With a view to controlling these CAP requirements and introducing a real-time monitoring system, NEO and DHI-GRAS are at the forefront. This new technique is more efficient (every plot is checked), cheaper, more accurate and more transparent than the old technique, as real-time measurements can be consulted directly by both the Danish Agricultural Agency and the farmer.