Unlocking the Potential of Imaging for Agricultural Producers
Leaders in imagery technology offered insights into the true value proposition for agricultural users during one of the first panels at the recent 2023 VISION Conference in Glendale, AZ.
Dave Gebhardt, General Manager for EarthDaily Agro, moderated the panel which focused on fully utilizing the massive potential of imaging data. “Imagery has been around for a long, long time and it’s still not one of the most highly sought after data sets,” said Gebhardt. “So, we talked a little bit about how we combine different data sets, maybe some satellite imagery with drones.”
Gebhardt says they are also working with different sectors in satellite imagery. “We’re measuring anything that’s green, so how about forestry, how about carbon? How about ESG? So we are looking at opportunities that go outside of traditional precision ag.”
Joining Gebhardt on the panel were Tim Hassinger, Intelinair, Inc.; Orlando Saez, Aker Technologies; and Ron Osborne, Head of Technology for Agriculture, Amazon Web Services (AWS). All agreed that customers are driving the imaging industry to focus on what they really want.
Osborne noted that AWS made a major commitment to imagery technology last year when geospatial capabilities were added to the Amazon SageMaker machine learning (ML) platform. “It was a commitment to the value of imagery within decision making support systems in agriculture and many other industries,” he said. “AWS is unusually customer-focused on how we can remove what we call ‘undifferentiated heavy lifting’ and get access to insights and data.”
Saez says his customers are demanding more value from imagery products. “Today it’s not about the pretty image, it’s all about the derivative,” said Saez. “So how translatable is the derivative that you create from the imagery into something that is actually useful to whoever the stakeholder is.”
Hassinger said that Intelinair has seen a shift to being more retailer-focused where the demand is for ease of use and good value. “Finding that balance of value generation and simplicity is not easy,” he said. “As an industry we fell victim to thinking the technology will solve everything when the reality is the technology is an enabler and being able to present it that way is really critical.”
While some believe that there is too much data for agriculture to deal with right now, Gebhardt believes it’s more a question of what type of data. “We have lacked the right quantity, quality and type of data that we really need to be foundational from the imagery perspective to deliver on that higher value,” he said.
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