Preparation

Needs assessment and market consultation

In order to define the challenge in greater detail, we have organized a market consultation in collaboration with Verhaert. It took place on 8 May in Brussels. 

The presentations and the report are available at the bottom of this page under 'documents'. 

Two tracks

Broadly speaking, the preparatory phase has provided a number of avenues for development, two of which are the most promising within L&V services and within PIP, namely

1. Tool for determining yield and loss for a number of crops on the basis of remote sensing data

One of the Department's ambitions is to help farmers manage their plots and encourage them to achieve better yields. An objective determination of yields/losses is also valuable in the context of the agricultural disaster fund. The department sees the monitoring of yields using remote sensing data as an opportunity to offer the farmer added value. With this information, the farmer could, for example, fertilise, irrigate or detect diseases in the field at an early stage.

2. App with which the farmer himself can send the necessary information (by means of photos, location, etc.) to the government.

Because the satellite data are not always of the highest quality, especially in bad weather conditions, this solution was put forward as a possible and very practical alternative, provided the app is equipped with some features that exclude fraud and guarantee privacy, and provided the app can be linked to the data architecture of L&V.

The Department of Agriculture and Fisheries has translated these two avenues into two priority public contracts.