Farmeye has signed a contract with the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Solutions department in a new deal which will see them measuring hedgerow carbon and habitat value, the Irish agri-tech firm revealed.
The project will set out to do this using a range of space assets including satellite imagery.
Dr. Eoghan Finneran, CEO of Farmeye, explained:
“We all know the focus on carbon sequestration and habitats at a farm level; however, accurate and scalable measurement of these features will be essential to farmers to mitigate their impacts of production.
“We choose hedgerows as the focus for this project as they are a dominant but undervalued feature of Western European farms.
“This is particularly the case in Ireland where they cover 6% of the land area – yet farmers are not given any credit for the biodiversity and carbon sequestration value of these hedges and treelines,” the CEO added.
As Europe’s “gateway to space”, the European Space Agency’s mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
ESA Space Solutions is ESA’s commercial arm which focuses on supporting companies in creating commercially sustainable services that use space data and technology.
Towards the end of 2020, ESA Space Solutions announced their “Responsible AgriTech Kick-start” initiative aiming to invite proposals for studies assessing the viability of commercial services that would address challenges in the sector using space assets.
Farmeye responded to the call and went through a competitive process to win the innovation contract, the Roscommon-based firm said.
The leader of the bid and co-founder of Farmeye, Brendan Allen, said: “We are delighted that ESA will support this work heralding a significant milestone for Farmeye and agri-tech in general.”
Farmeye explains the project
The project itself is using a range of techniques to estimate the size, structure and characteristics of hedgerows, Farmeye says.
It is a combination of ground measurements with satellite imagery and ultimately it will build a dataset that will allow Farmeye to “create an automated model that can monitor hedgerows nationally and continuously and provide tangible measurements about hedgerow value”, the firm says.
Noting the advances in technology in recent years, Joe Desbonnet, co-founder and head of technology in Farmeye, added:
“The type of model we are developing here is very feasible and affordable.”
When asked what all this means and who will use the technology, Dr. Eoghan Finneran said:
“Ultimately it will benefit farmers first and foremost and it will also contribute to increasing carbon stocks and biodiversity on farms.
“We have been working for over four years now with Ireland’s most prominent agri-corporates on soil health programmes and have been using digitalisation as a powerful tool to manage farm-level data.
“This is just the next phase of our development and we are delighted to be involved with ESA Space Solutions,” he concluded.