Precision agriculture has become a brand new way of managing crop information. Its growth has been driven by such technological breakthroughs as GPS, geographical information systems and remote sensing technology. Until now such concepts had been applied in other industrial fields and are now being brought in as part of advanced farming systems.
Wineo (Weather INformation and Earth Observation) is an earth-observation system based on satellite images that are then processed to generate a precision-agriculture intelligent aid system. Wineo also uses meteorological data that improves decision-making processes in such important farming factors as the need of irrigation, the timing of the harvesting arrangements, reduction of water consumption and the use of pesticides and fertilizers. All this helps to minimize the carbon footprint and the impact of pesticides on farming produce. The system is estimated to cut direct production costs by between 4 and 6%, meaning a substantial improvement in net farming profits.
Wineo is driven by a powerful data-mining engine, culling a vast amount of data from various information sources and processing it in a web portal where farmers, communities, cooperatives, producers and other stakeholder institutions all have access to comprehensive information that allows them to analyze and optimize their processes, enabling them to boost their yield considerably and reduce the environmental impact of their farming activities.