Imagery in Agriculture: Time for a Reality Check (Part Two)

#News(AgriTech) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

So here we go again. Since we are now in the heat of summer, everyone seems to once again be clambering for imagery of their fields or some data that’s imagery related. Oddly enough though, not too recently this really wasn’t a thing most cared about. Heck for some, they still don’t and it’s part of what I plan to talk about in this article. The other part you see is more about some of the inherent issues that imagery has and how others are promoting and even using it incorrectly. Let’s start here with the first one and hopefully it’ll lead us to the other. Strap in… I’ve seen more and more people start to use imagery from satellites, aerial, and drones to say the least. Many just want a pretty picture naturally, but of course the real value is using the data to do something with it. The issue though is some are starting to see some inherent problems with this data for different things. It really comes down to an old problem the precision ag industry has. That is for some groups, we sell or work with one type of dataset so that is all you need. This has been a problem with soil, yield, topography, and EC/conductivity as well, not collectively but individually.

It’s pretty easy to see why this happens since most are just trying to sell a product they know well and behind a system that works well with that data. Even Satshot which I’ve always been connected to has done this from time to time. Now that’s not to say we promoted it as the only answer like some have had issues with. At times, sure kinda but not often (at least I didn’t as much, cough cough Lanny). So, my issue here lies with the fact that there are many new groups touting imagery as THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING! It’s not and it can’t be. More data the better always.

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