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5th July, 2017. The EARSC competition “European EO product of the year” rewarded a company which has developed a product which will support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at national, regional and/or local levels, and the monitoring and reporting against the global indicator framework.

Jon Carver, Air and Space Evidence and Rob Postma, Airbus and sponsor of the cocktail event

The SDGs are being launched with an emphasis on collecting data that will be extensive and specific enough to serve these needs. European Earth Observation industry can help achieve the SDGs by providing critical information on natural resources, government operations, public services, and population demographics. That’s why EARSC decided to focus its 2017 Product award on the industry contribution to SDGs.

During the whole process, 15 companies got interested in the award and 7 of them sent the required documentation. EARSC thereby c Waste from Space by Air and Space Evidence as winner of the context of the commercial product of the year which support the monitoring and reporting against SDGs in the most innovative way.

Waste from Space is a new geo-information product which offers a much-needed intelligence gathering and analysis service to governments, investigating and providing evidence of one of the most significant global environmental problems, unlawful waste dumping sites. The product, which was developed by Air and Space Evidence in 2017, is based on a semi-automated detection model utilising Earth Observation data, enabling the company to offer an effective and commercially viable geospatial intelligence tool that can detect serious waste crime.

This product serves several SDGs indicators. Waste from Space successfully drives down the size of the waste crime problem by combatting organised crime (SDG 16.4), ensure that much more waste/hazardous waste is subject to environmentally sound management in its life cycle (SDG 12.4 push more waste to be treated properly and sustainably within the circular economy (SDG 12.5), and mean much less waste is not released illegally into the environment (SDG 6.3, 11.6 , 12.4).

Air and Space Evidence was founded in the UK in 2014. It is run by highly experienced consultants with a wealth of academic, business, and military intelligence knowledge and connections in the legal, security and technical fields of Earth observation monitoring. They are known as the World’s first “Space Detective Agency”. More info at www.space-evidence.net

EARSC represents the Earth Observation geo-information services companies in Europe. Today EARSC has 96 members coming from more than 22 countries in Europe. Our members include both commercial operators of EO satellites, IT, downstream and value-adding companies. The sector plays a key role in providing value-added geo-spatial information to its customers in Europe and the world. In 2016, the revenue of the European EO services sector is estimated to be around one billion euros for approximatively 450 companies and giving work to nearly 7000 highly skilled employees. More info at www.earsc.org

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The population increase confronts our societies with major and complex challenges regarding the production of raw materials, recycling, and the management of waste material.

Thanks to the geospatial data it collects and provides free of charge to users, Copernicus has a strong potential for contributing to meet these challenges, either by improving existing applications or by enabling new applications to emerge.

In this context, three post-doctoral research scholarship projects co-funded by the European Commission and the EIT RawMaterials under the RawMATCop project are going to develop skills and expertise, as well as demonstrations and new applications at the intersection between Earth observation data and the raw materials sector.

The outcomes of these 12-month projects will serve as a basis for the elaboration of a lifelong learning course to be executed in the second quarter of 2018. The course will aim at training raw materials practitioners, professionals and researchers in how to use Copernicus data in their daily work. It will be open to participants from both inside and outside the EIT RawMaterials community.

The three awarded projects are:

  • “Integration of Copernicus data in a multi-scale and multi-source exploration scheme”. Raw materials security in the EU requires exploration discoveries that increase reserves of strategically-important raw materials. The project intends to demonstrate that Copernicus can provide the backbone to boost the performance of traditional exploration techniques while making them more acceptable.
  • “Spatiotemporal mapping of dust dispersion around mining sites using remote sensing”. Sentinel 2 has a proven potential for mapping iron oxides and offers a high revisiting time. The project aims at exploring the potential of Copernicus data in mine site monitoring and especially in mapping dust dispersion patterns around active sites.
  • “Earth’s Critical Zone Early Warning System (CZ-EWS) by integrating SAR and seismic data in a mining context”. The public perception of mining industry is usually negative due to the impact that mining activities have on the near surface environment where Earth, water and life interact (known as the “Earth’s Critical Zone” – CZ). The project aims at improving mining viability by developing a CZ Early Warning System and guaranteeing ground/underground CZ integrity

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Gilching, 26 June 2017. Copernicus App Lab’s data access platform merges the scientific Earth observation (EO) community and mobile developers for a safer, healthier and economical stronger world. Registration are welcome now – all entries are automatically part of an exclusive beta-community.

The Copernicus App Lab provides an easy data access platform that brings together the scientific Earth observation (EO) community and mobile developers. A proof-of-concept provides data from the Copernicus Land, Marine Environment, and Atmosphere Monitoring Services as linked open data to promote the inclusion of EO data in mobile applications. Hereby, app developers bridge the digital divide between the established, science-driven EO community and the innovative, entrepreneurial world.

In order to participate in this collective endeavor making the world a safer and economically stronger place, app developers are now called to register until 24 July 2017 at www.app-lab.eu/

Registrations are automatically part of an exclusive beta-community with a free travel to the European Space Agency (ESA) App Camp to Frascati, Italy.

“Copernicus will deliver an unprecedented volume of available data, provide new operational services, and foster new business opportunities and job creation.” explains Elzbieta Bienkowska, European Commissioner for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs.

The overall objective of the Copernicus App Lab is to demonstrate a user-driven evolution in services that can be integrated seamlessly into the existing service architecture. This means, that Copernicus contributes to the development of innovative applications and services, by making the vast majority of its data, analyses, forecasts, and maps freely available and accessible, in order to make our world safer, healthier, and economically stronger. Thus, the simple data access every downstream service developer requires, must be combined with in-depth knowledge of EO data processing.

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29 June 2017. An interdisciplinary team of scientists from the University of Leicester and other institutions has played a pivotal role in research investigating a possible link between air pollution and the rise in type 2 diabetes.

New research, published in the journal Environment International, examined data from 10,443 participants from diabetes screening studies in Leicestershire, UK.

The exposure to air pollution, the number of cases of type 2 diabetes and the impact of demographic and lifestyle factors were all considered. The authors concluded that demographic factors largely explained the association between air pollution and type 2 diabetes.

The research team, supported by the NIHR, is comprised of University of Leicester experts from a wide variety of fields, including Earth Observation Science, the University’s Diabetes Research Centre and the Department of Health Sciences and builds upon world-leading research in these areas.

Dr Gary O’Donovan, who led the research and is formerly of the University of Leicester and now at Loughborough University, said: “High air pollution and low physical activity are two of the leading causes of disease and premature death in middle and high-income countries.

“Like most cities in the UK, Leicester has only a handful of air quality monitors. The UN has estimated that two-thirds of world’s population will be living in cities by 2050 and our cities must become better, healthier places in which to live. Cities like Copenhagen in Denmark and Medellín in Colombia are doing a much better job of measuring air pollution and facilitating active transport than most cities in the UK.”

Exposure to traffic-related air pollutants is known to cause insulin resistance, a hallmark of the disease, and observational evidence has been applied to better understand a potential link.

Professor Roland Leigh, Technical Director of EarthSense and Director of Enterprise at the University of Leicester’s Institute for Space and Earth Observation, and co-author of the study, said: “We know that air pollution is the world’s largest environmental health risk affecting 92% of the population and associated with more than three million deaths per year, and evidence suggested it may contribute to the rise in type 2 diabetes.

“While original results suggested association between air pollution and associated particulates and type 2 diabetes, when the effects of lifestyle and demographic factors were considered, and given the limited size of the sample, evidence for direct association with air pollution was inconclusive.

“We will, however, continue to apply cutting-edge air quality research to unpick potentially connected long-term exposure factors,” continued Professor Leigh. “As innovators in air quality monitoring, the University of Leicester and EarthSense has a fundamental contribution to make in the understanding of the complex issues of pollution exposure and health.”

Diabetes is one of the leading causes of death in lower middle, upper middle and high income economies. The global prevalence of diabetes has nearly doubled, from 4.7% in 1980 to 8.5% in 2014, with the majority of cases being type 2. Experimental evidence exists to suggest exposure to nitrogen dioxide and associated particulate matter is related to inflammation and insulin resistance.

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25 June 2017. Satellogic™ , a provider of affordable, high-resolution Earth Observation (EO), has just announced the company has closed a substantial $27 million Series B funding round.

The closing of the series B round happened during the same week as the launch into orbit of the company’s sixth smallsat (the third in its high-resolution imaging constellation) on June 15 from Jiuquan, China. Investors in this round include the Chinese company Tencent® as the lead, backed up by São Paulo-based Pitanga™, CrunchFund™ and other investors.

Satellogic has created a uniquely low-cost smallsat platform with unparalleled capabilities, enabling for the first time affordable monitoring of the planet at one meter of resolution and high-frequency, hyper-spectral data solutions ideally suited for advanced geo-intelligence and other applications. The one meter resolution payload in Satellogic’s satellites captures state-of-the-art high quality, high-resolution data at a small fraction of the cost of competing systems, enabling for the first time the affordable monitoring of human activity on the planet.

The hyper spectral camera is unique among its competitors’ satellites in orbit, and is capable of 30 meter spatial resolution from orbit and has the ability to discern narrow spectral bands positioned with nanometric precision along the visible and near-infrared spectrum. Hyper-spectral imaging allows the advanced identification of both materials and molecular processes, and is particularly well-suited for agriculture, environmental and climate-change monitoring. Other applications of hyperspectral data include land use classification intelligence for industry and government planning as well as forecasting, mineralogical discovery and forestry management.

With the March 2017 de-commissioning of NASA’s Hyperion bird, Satellogic is now the sole supplier of high-resolution, hyper-spectral imagery in the world.

Emiliano Kargieman, the CEO and founder of Satellogic, noted that the combination of Satellogic’s capabilities for low-cost data capture in high-resolution and the hyperspectral domain are a powerful enabler for the firm’s own data science teams, in addition for those of company partners, and ultimately allow more value to be provided to end customers. He emphasized that the company is focused on unlocking the value of live geo-information analytics to improve daily decision-making for every branch of government and for every corporation, small company or person on the planet.

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22 June 2017. A team of scientists led by the Universities of Leicester and East Anglia are leading research to protect wildlife by using satellite data to identify monkey populations that have declined through hunting.

In a new article in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, a working group chaired by Professor Heiko Balzter, from the National Centre for Earth Observation at the University of Leicester, has looked at ways in which an array of technologies could be used to identify how many species are alive in an area and the risks they may be exposed to.

Using a combination of satellite and ground data, the team can map multiple indicators of monkey distribution, including human activity zones as inferred from roads and settlements, direct detections from mosquito-derived iDNA, animal sound recordings, plus detections of other species that are usually found when monkeys are present, such as other large vertebrates.

This data could be used to identify areas in which monkey populations are particularly vulnerable.
Professor Balzter explained: “There are ten times as many satellites in operation now as there were in the 1970s. Most people now use maps from Earth Observation on their mobile, such as Google Earth. The European Copernicus satellites now provide free global data every 5 days at 10m resolution. And think of small cube satellites that fit into a tote bag and weigh only 2kg. Satellite technology has undergone a massive change and has never been so accessible.

“However, satellites cannot observe small animals directly. Most biodiversity is invisible to a satellite.
“Scientists have developed indicators for biodiversity, such as land cover type, and modern ecological models that can digest satellite data and information on species occurrence are now offering near-real time monitoring of the land management impacts on biodiversity. We propose using a mix of new technology rather than a single remedy.”

Among the technologies which can be used to map monkey distribution are automated recording devices that can automatically record animal sounds in a landscape. Modern genetic fingerprinting on a massive scale, called ‘high-throughput DNA sequencing’, can also tell which species live in a landscape based on the environmental DNA that they leave behind in the form of saliva, urine, faeces or blood.

Mass-collected bulk samples of organisms can be collected in the field with relative ease.
For example, mosquitoes can be caught in a trap and blended into a ‘biodiversity soup’ to analyse the DNA in the blood of the animals they have been feeding on.

Professor Douglas W. Yu from the School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, who co-led the research, said: “DNA-based methods are a powerful way to relieve the taxonomic bottleneck in biodiversity assessment, but they are only partially able to relieve the sampling bottleneck. In the end, the only way to cover whole landscapes is to combine satellites, sequencers, and statistics.”
Together, the data on the animal sounds and photos, the DNA they leave behind, and satellite observations provide a wealth of biodiversity information.

Professor Balzter added: “It may sound like a strange idea – satellites that can see the genetic make-up of the blood sucked by mosquitoes. Of course they cannot directly see that. But big data from genetic fingerprinting of animal DNA in a landscape combined with fine-resolution satellite data and sophisticated ecological models can. We need to work across subjects to make this happen. These are very exciting times. If our research can help to save a species that gives me a very strong sense of purpose to my job as a university professor.”
Many animal species are threatened with extinction. As a result of this, the UK has signed up to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to try and stop this loss of species.

In 2010, the Convention met in Aichi, Japan, and agreed a set of targets, called the Aichi Biodiversity Targets. These targets aim to address the underlying causes of biodiversity, reduce the pressures on biodiversity, safeguard ecosystems and species, enhance the benefits from biodiversity and ecosystem services, and enable participatory planning, knowledge management and capacity building.

The paper is led by Alex Bush of the Kunming Institute of Zoology and Canadian Rivers Institute.
Alex said: “For years ecologists have struggled to test or extend models of ecosystem-level change because the data were too expensive to collect at the required scales. Instead decisions have typically relied on surrogates with unknown consequences. With the parallel developments in remote sensing, genomics and more automated field recording, we now have the tools needed to collect data at large scales. Methods to model these ‘big data’ sources are already available and could improve how we conserve and manage ecosystems, and the essential services they provide, in a period of intense global change.”

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Monitoring the evolution of wars and conflicts, the damage they produce to the environment, heritage sites and infrastructures, as well as the extent of the humanitarian crises to which they lead can be a complicated task, given the danger that being on-site poses.

Satellite imagery is a key way to both monitor and map a conflict’s evolution and impact, without the risks and costs associated with having people on-site. It allows users to capture reliable imagery, and ensures accurate and timely monitoring over sites located in areas affected by ongoing threats, where it’s otherwise difficult to get up to date information and verify potential damage.

Deimos Imaging has been monitoring and mapping the conflict in and around Mosul since its beginning using its two satellites: the medium resolution Deimos-1 and the very-high resolution Deimos-2. Both satellites operate continuously, with a global network of five ground station ensuring contact with each of them every orbit to command and download data every 90 minutes (see ‘Satellite capabilities’).

In this study, a synergistic tipping and queuing has been carried out, collecting information and coordinating activities between Deimos Imaging’s sensors. Thanks to its wide swath and high revisit time, Deimos-1 spotted where the main developments were going on in Mosul and its surroundings; then, this information was used to task the very-high-resolution Deimos-2 over the identified areas to get much more detailed imagery.
The ability to record a sequence of images over time at different spatial resolution and the use of the tipping and queuing technique enabled the tracking and capture of the most relevant developments in Mosul’s conflict and its dynamics, both in context and in detail.

Moreover, the expansion of camps for refugees and internally displaced people (IDP), such as the one in Hammam al-Alil 25km south of Mosul was monitored, as were the evolution of the oil fires in Qayyarah and the changes in the agricultural production in the Nineveh region.

Thus, Deimos Imaging’s imagery helped with the assessment of the humanitarian, economic and environmental impact of this conflict, providing data to decision-makers in a wide range of areas, from NGOs and international organisations to local institutions promoting precision agriculture for the country’s recovery post-conflict.

The impact on agriculture

The Nineveh province was once Iraq’s breadbasket, accounting for almost half the country’s overall wheat supply. However, the ongoing conflict is jeopardising the agricultural production, mainly in the regions of the Nineveh, Kirkuk and Salahuddin governorates in Iraq. Deimos Imaging tasked both Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 satellites on the Nineveh Governorate in Iraq. The bands of Deimos-1 (RG, NIR) and Deimos-2 (RGB, NIR) have been especially designed for monitoring vegetation. In particular, they provide analytic-ready imagery, supplying the information needed for vegetation indices calculations. These provide an indication of the relative density and health of vegetation for each pixel of Deimos-1 and Deimos-2 imagery. In addition, the satellites’ high temporal resolution capacity ensures data is acquired systematically, enabling consistent monitoring and analysis. In general, this high frequency and high-resolution data can be used to supply a powerful operational service for precision agriculture, with an accurate multitemporal overlay at pixel level. This can empower precision agriculture users at different stages: planning; in-season practices and yield.


Deimos-1 image, Agriculture in the Nineveh region, Iraq


Deimos-2 image, Agriculture in the Nineveh region, Iraq

The humanitarian impact

Satellite imagery plays an increasingly important role in monitoring and measuring humanitarian crises. It serves to support decision-making and manage humanitarian aid and response through, for instance, the monitoring of changes in refugee IDP camps. Deimos-2 data helped to detect the evolution of the refugee camp at Hammam Al-Alil, around 25km south of Mosul. The multitemporal analysis of Deimos-2 imagery provided reliable information to measure the camp’s growth and density over time, allowing an estimate of the population sheltered there. Accurate multitemporal analysis showed that the number of tents increased from 3,738 on February 19 to 8,136 on April 22. Therefore, the camp doubled its size in just two months. Given that, on average, six people are accommodated in each tent, the number of people hosted in the camp increased from around 22,500 to almost 50,000 between February 19 to April 22. The image captured on April 22 also shows a part of the camp still under construction, which enables a forecast of future occupancy of almost 56,000 people –a number that matches the capacity expectations of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which is responsible for managing and developing this camp.


Deimos-2 images, Hammam al Alil camp, captured on February 19 (left) and April 22 (right), 2017

On 24 June 2017, a massive landslide hit a village in Maoxian county in Sichuan province, south-western China, destroying 40 homes and killing dozens of people. Authorities suggest the event was triggered by prevailing heavy rains.

TRE ALTAMIRA has processed the entire archive of 45 Sentinel-1 satellite radar scenes acquired since October 2014 over the Maoxian area in less than 3 hours since reception of the last image. This has been achieved using our SqueeSAR™ processing chain in combination with in-house big-data computing power and SAR expertise.

Significantly, SqueeSAR™ measurements reveal clear, precursory movements of the ground months before the landslide occurred, meaning that, if routinely monitored, there could have been more warning of the potential threat. Results also highlight other areas undergoing deformation.


SqueeSAR™ measurements over the Maoxian county. Dataset: Sentinel-1, descending geometry. Acquisition period: October 2014 – June 2017. Background image: Google Earth.


SqueeSAR™ measurements over the landslide area. The displacement time series superimposed reveals clear precursory movements months before the event.

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June 27, 2017. Remote sensing technologies, using satellite and aerial data, could revolutionise the management of the oil palm industry, bringing both business and environmental benefits, say environmental experts writing in the journal Geo-spatial Information Science.

Yet much greater collaboration between industry and academia is needed to achieve the true potential of these technologies. To date, palm oil plantations have generally been monitored using costly and time-consuming land-based assessments, and many countries lack the resources to do regular surveys. Remote sensing, on the other hand, can provide quick, repetitive, accurate information on huge areas of oil palms using high-resolution satellite imagery. It also provides the necessary independent monitoring needed for certification agencies, such as performed by RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil) and ISCC (International Sustainability and Carbon Certification).

Mainly grown in Southeast Asia and Africa, oil palms are a highly productive, producing more vegetable oil per hectare than any other oil crop. However, the conversion of tropical forests to palm oil plantations has devastated the environment—resulting in the loss of a huge number of plant and animal species. Amid rising demand for cheaper vegetable oil and biofuel, the challenge is to increase the production of oil palm while reducing the impact on the world’s forests and the environment.

Geoinformation technologies could lead to huge improvements in the sustainable management of palm oil plantations—helping to solve some of the environmental problems by, for example, detecting illegal deforestation and enabling early diagnosis of disease and pest problems, as well as improving productivity by assessing crop and soil conditions more effectively.

However, some of the remote sensing data exploration methods are still at the research and development stage, and progress is slow, explains Dr Kasturi Devi Kanniah from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia in Malaysia and her colleagues. Although the potential opportunities are already being explored by plantation companies, the techniques are often kept confidential. The authors call for industry and academia to join forces to speed up the development and implementation of these technologies, and increase the responsible management of the whole sector. Various opportunities exist, such as:

  • Using remote sensing imagery to identify lands suitable for oil palm expansion—protecting high carbon stock forests (which if cleared release high amount of greenhouse gases), and land with high conservation value.
  • Developing remote sensing technologies to improve the accuracy of yield prediction and performance—by measuring observable biophysical parameters like the greenness of the palm canopy, height of the tree, and soil conditions.
  • Expanding the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to provide regular and timely monitoring of oil palm plantations in tropical countries where clouds often restrict the use of satellite images.

With the open data policy of the European Copernicus programme monitoring at a proper scale and suitable repeat cycle becomes feasible. The availability of multisensor optical and active microwave imagery at high spatial resolution fosters the use of geoinformation at plantation and tree level. “The article describes the state-of-the-art in remote sensing for palm oil and provides an overview on the potential to improve a sustainable oil palm plantation management, including urgent research questions.” says Dr. Christine Pohl from University of Osnabrueck. Her research team together with a network of other experts from the University of Twente in the Netherlands and ISCC in Cologne are investigating the support of sustainability assessment using geoinformation.

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June 25, 2017. GROW is the UK’s only agri-tech business plan competition, established by Agri-Tech East to stimulate entrepreneurship in the industry.

From left to right: Dallan Byrne (SoilSense), David Godding (Farming Data), Belinda Clarke (Agri-Tech East) and Howard Partridge (Innovate UK)

Lifting sub-Saharan farmers out of poverty by creating a market for their surplus and a water sensor that can create moisture maps from the air, were the two winning business plans at GROW – the UK’s agri-tech business plan competition. GROW was developed by Agri-Tech East to stimulate and support entrepreneurship in agriculture and horticulture.

Dr Belinda Clarke, Director of Agri-Tech East, said that the entries this year were looking at global challenges: “Smart water use, enhancing data available for decision support and improving profitability by finding markets for edible waste were strong themes among the entries this year. Many were looking for partners and investors for pilot studies and this is where the agri-tech cluster in the east of England is particularly strong. Our membership includes investors, researchers and innovative farmers and for strong propositions there is a receptive environment.”

The keynote speaker was Robert Alston, Managing Director of Silfield Ltd and Board Director at Anglia Farmers. Alston is also chairman of AF Finance Limited, an agricultural pooled collective investment scheme.

Alston comments that for technology to be adopted by farmers it needs to be significantly better than what they have already, to offer the opportunity for them to differentiate their products, or to guarantee quality standards so they meet contractual requirements.

“You have to be able to adapt quickly in this market,” he says. “You have to get something out there and prove it. It must be a problem that is there for farmers now – not one that is only becoming a problem, which we might see further down the line.”

The GROW Judges’ Award went to Farming Data, a mobile trading platform that uses mobile money and SMS texting on a basic phone to allow smallholders and buyers to communicate and trade more effectively. “Local is the new global” comments co-founder David Godding.

For the first time the audience had an opportunity to tip their own winner with money from the ‘Bank of Agri-Tech East’. The audience choice was SoilSense , an aerial soil sensor that can provide a detailed map of moisture content of the soil – even through vegetation – for a whole farm, in minutes. The proprietary technology was first developed for detecting breast cancer tumours.

Smallholders grow 50 per cent of the world’s food and 40 per cent of global food production relies on irrigation – so the two organisations are providing solutions for a large unmet need.

Howard Partridge from Innovate UK , sponsor of the 2016/17 challenge, said: “There was a strong line-up of finalists who presented very innovative business concepts, we will look forward to following their progress.”

Dr Belinda Clarke, director of Agri-Tech East, thanked the participants and the judges.

“Thank you also to Innovate UK for its support, to the organisations that have provided support prizes and to Agrii who hosted the event at its Throws Farm Technology Centre.”

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