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AGRO-ICT-Backbone by PROGIS We want to draw your attention to the many benefits resulting from merging complementary technologies to one unique and outstanding integrated solution. I'm speaking about 30cm ortho-images as base for planning and control, of GIS-based software applications for processing images and managing agriculture, forestry, environment, risks, natural resources, communities and pipelines and of weather- and soil moisture-data for coming to better decisions - let us call it AGRO-ICT-Backbone. The supplier of the images is Microsoft BING, that of the software PROGIS and those for the weather-station are two well-known Austrian telemetry providers. 62; 62; 62; What are the advantages? You have high resolution ortho-images (2,5-50 cm) available as from July 2012 in whole US and Western Europe with 30cm resolution and in other regions according to an order list or project based. You may start any planning immediately with them and you have an easy to learn and use, PC-based GIS-software called WinGIS 174;. For rural area management there is a long list of applications to manage planning, controlling, documentation, traceability, nutrient balancing, (CO2 balancing), subsidy claim, profit margin calculations, logistics, forest inventories, environmental tasks, risks and natural resources. An overview about the most important PROGIS product information will be free for download on request. Next to it you have a weather station network and soils sensors delivering accurate information to support your local decision process and precision farming. 62; 62; 62; Where specific applications are missing to handle YOUR specific tasks& hellip; & hellip;you can easily develop with the help of the GIS-based developer component own applications for visualizing and finishing your specific data. To give you an example on such an add-on development please ask for a description of tree-forest, an application for forest management developed by a PROGIS partner and sold via PROGIS. The partner started to process his data with our SDK linked with aerial images & ndash; as Bing maps - and developed this outstanding new application. You could do a similar thing and even market it as we are sure, that there are many other people in the world working on the same or similar challenging task than you. Contact: Walter H. MAYER E-mail : office(a)progis.com Environmental Lifecycle and Sustainability Assessment See: http://www.elsa-lca.org/ Last fall, a Food and Drug Administration committee issued a preliminary report finding that genetically modified salmon& mdash;which has been under review for over a decade& mdash;appears to be okay for consumer consumption See: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AdvisoryCommittees/CommitteesMeetingMateri… VeterinaryMedicineAdvisoryCommittee/UCM224762.pdf EU should sow the seeds of innovation to transform agriculture urgently, say Lords Agricultural innovation must be at the heart of both Europe and the UK's policy-making, in an effort to respond to a rising global population, to the challenges of climate change and to food price volatility. This is the core message of the House of Lords Agriculture, Fisheries and Environment EU Sub-Committee, which today reports the findings of its year-long investigation into innovation in EU agriculture. There are three main areas that the Committee is strongly urging the EU to consider in the current debate about the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and innovation policy: - The European Commission must significantly increase investment in scientific research in the agricultural sector by reducing the proportion of funding devoted to the CAP and diverting it to agricultural research by the EU's Research Programme. - All countries must ensure that innovative knowledge is fully communicated to the agricultural sector. - The "innovation-hostile environment" of Brussels must be overcome. Chair of the Committee, Lord Carter of Coles, said: "The world's population is expected to grow from 7 billion at present to 9 billion in 2050 - that's another 2 billion mouths to feed with affordable food that is also nutritionally better than ever. And we are asking our agricultural producers to do this without increasing the amount of land available for cultivation, whilst also tackling the problems of climate change, meaning they must reduce their use of fossil fuels and use fewer practices that emit greenhouse gases. "While agriculture has always had to innovate, famers cannot be expected to rise to these exceptional challenges without significant help. The EU collectively, and Member States nationally, must do more to help solve these problems. With around & euro;400 billion in the agricultural policy budget and another & euro;2 billion allocated to agricultural research, there is huge room for re-allocation of finances without changing the size of the agricultural purse. The Commission's proposals last week for 2014 onwards were a step in the right direction but they do not represent the shift that is required. "However, an increase in the research budget will count for nothing if we do not also involve farmers. First, research findings and innovative ideas need to be put into practice through better farm advice systems & ndash; crucially, farmers must be helped to understand how change can make their business more profitable. Second, scientists, retailers, industry, farmers and consumers all need to be working in partnership. In our inquiry, we heard some good examples of this happening at the moment. But we must ensure that it is happening systematically across the EU. "Without the investment in research, communication with producers and consumers and a change in regulatory approach that makes Brussels more innovation-friendly, EU agricultural production will continue to stagnate. The stakes are high. Agriculture must no longer be in a policy silo of its own. The UK Government, other Member States and the European Commission must place agriculture at the heart of policy-making." See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0plfXiasvM Atomic bar A neutron walks into a bar and says to the bartender, 'How much for a beer? ' The bartender says, 'For you, no charge '. About the EFITA mailing list You can use the efita moderated list ( 62; 4900 subscribers) to announce any event / product / web site / joke (!) related to IT in agriculture, environment, food industry and rural areas. If you do not wish to receive our messages, please see: http://www.efita.net to remove your E-mail address from our mail list. ************************************************************************* Guy Waksman - ACTA Informatique Tel. : 33 (0) 9 63 24 15 48 Mobile : 33 (0) 6 07 15 09 89 Fax : 33 (0) 1 40 04 50 11 Visioconf. IP : 81.252.219.45 Gazette hebdomadaire 'Du c 244;t 233; du web et de l 'informatique agricole ' http://www.acta.asso.fr et http://www.acta-informatique.fr