Posts Tagged: ceres
November Library Classes - Gardening on a Dime
Brrr! The weather is getting chilly. It's the perfect time to stay indoors while learning how to...
GIS and Remote Sensing Workshop with CERES Imaging
Last week IGIS was very pleased to partner with CERES Imaging Inc. (http://www.ceresimaging.net/) to provide a workshop on GIS and Remote Sensing for Crop Agriculture, in Davis CA. This particular event represents an example of how UC ANR's IGIS Program is working with private industries to better deliver valuable services (in this case training) to public audiences who are eager to put the services/information into action; reinforcing UC ANR's priorities of public service and Cooperative Extension.
This event was partially funded by a Department of Water Resources (DWR) grant to CERES, which among other things has helped CERES to provide very affordable, high resolution, multi-spectral, thermal and NDVI data to agriculturalists around California. The objective of the DWR funding was to help facilitate more agile farming practices for water conservation, through the adoption of newly available aerial image products, while introducing farmers to contemporary image processing and mapping methods. By partnering with CERES in this effort, IGIS is helping farmers to better utilize CERES's image products, to ideally make their operations more efficient and profitable.
Internet start-up gleans trust from association with UCCE
Ceres Imaging, an Oakland-based start-up, is working closely with UC Cooperative Extension on its aerial imaging of farm fields, a fact that is helping the company gain trust by association, reported Emma Foehringer Merchant on Grist.org.
Ceres puts equipment on low-flying airplanes to take pictures that will help farmers optimize water and fertilizer application. According to field tests, the imagery works. Since 2014, Ceres has teamed up with UC Cooperative Extension to conduct field trials, including one for the Almond Board that measured the response of nuts to different rates of watering.
In that study, data from Ceres' imaging matched well with the UCCE ground "truthing," said Blake Sanden, UC Cooperative Extension water and soils farm advisor.
According to the article, "Ceres' relationship with the extension program has helped the company gain trust with sometimes-skeptical farmers." Sanden called UCCE trials the "gold standard of efficacy" for new products in the ag market.
There is also increased interest in precise water management after years of drought and cutbacks on federal water allocation.
"The attitude (among farmers) used to be, 'I can find water,'" Sanden said. "I would say that 30, 40 years ago, there was an attitude of hope ... that some of the restrictions on pumping water (would) go away." He said growers expected decision-makers "to come back to reality and understand that we've got to make money in California and grow food."
But the restrictions didn't go away. Instead, they became stricter. The uncertainty about water deliveries has made farmers friendlier to new technologies, like the one offered by Ceres.